Goldenloch january 27, week 4 2014
This is an extract that was written by me and posted on a fishing website a few years ago and more or less says the same as the previous two posts but is a bit better written
It was during a very wet year in the early 1980s that the Nicol family first muted the idea of a fishery being created, my father and mother who were both great anglers in their day, and had many friends and colleagues in the fishing industry, and having spent most of their time travelling the length and breadth of the country in the pursuit of their sport, they were always looking for that special place, that they could both enjoy fishing, somewhere that had a tranquil setting, somewhere they could just relax, most of their fishing buddies of that time, tended to fish just occasionally on lochs and rivers, but all loved to go in the summer for the wild trout and salmon up north, loch fishing, was pretty much in its infancy and was concentrated mostly around Loch Leven, Lindores and Cameron Reservoir, in reading of my fathers diaries it is noted that the quality of fish on all of these places was pretty poor, with the exception of Loch Leven, which “Improved dramatically towards the end of the season” All this was during the 60 and 70 and the assumption here is, that, there was not a huge amount of fish suppliers, in fact some were never stocked, and also that Fish husbandry then, was not nearly as good as now, I can also remember as a young boy being involved with the total eradication of all the pike and perch in Lindores back in 1966, by Massie Hamilton, this was when thousands of fish were poisoned in an attempt to give Lindores trout a chance to survive and grow, my friend and I were on a boat throwing this grey sandy gunge into the water, as men took it in turn to row round the loch, millions of fish were killed and removed, and boy did they stink, Mr Hamilton tried to set up a hatchery at Woodmill farm, and as a boy I would help to feed the fingerlings’ but after a few years the disease levels were too high and it was abandoned, Gordon Howe a close family friend was a businessman and entrepreneur, who was probably one of the first to see the opportunity of fly fishing as a sport in Scotland, and with the help and support of people like my father, made Loch Fitty into a new and great fishery, the average fish size then was about 1 ½ pounds and a big fish was 2lbs, but the bag sizes were huge, some of the entries in his diary are for amazing numbers, two examples are “Montgomery’s boat and friends, 350 trout for a good day” “ Collison and Robin caught 60 and put as many back in the water, not really the done thing” All this time my parents used to say that what was needed was a small friendly fishery where you could go and just experiment, relax and enjoy a quiet day without the stress of having to be super organised, a place that you could go and for a few hours, feel like it was your own private fishery, also but most importantly it had to be quite challenging, and it must have quality trout, so my fathers remit was set and has remained with us till this day, We decided to empty what was a small loch and then employ some experts in the form of “The Stirling University Institute of Aquaculture” Institute of Aquaculture: Research: Index who designed what was in their opinion the ultimate trout habitat for fly fishing in a small fresh water loch, this was done and a series of levels were taken which showed the topography and enabled the designers’ to put in place what was needed to make fish movement a priority, three distinct travel routes were designed for the fish and many trenches ledges and interconnecting pools and resting spots were created, also designed was an easy spot to fish which now I would say was a mistake as it is far to easy to catch fish at one particular spot, OK job done, what was needed next was someone to create this and Henderson’s of Ladybank were given the job which took 6 months, exactly to the blueprints after they had finished in the summer of 1984 a massive drag line was brought in ( it was the one that had spent its entire life on the Clyde cleaning out the river for launching ships) which removed 1000s of tons of material and that when the secret of where the pools were made, it then took a further year for the water to fill and clear, and so in the spring of 1985 we had the beginnings of our fishery.
The area that is now called “The Goldenloch” which I knew as a farmer and was called the meadow, for in the summer the non water area grew a very rich variety of meadow grasses and flowers and supposedly some kind of wild orchid according to the Department of Agriculture, who set up the SSI classifications, SSSIs in Scotland – Scottish Natural Heritage a classification that I vermontly refused to let them slap on this land, and also unknown to me until about the year 2000 this area was referred to in the farm title deeds, as the waters of beryhoille and in a very early map interestingly “berryhoille laux” is on it, but no Lindores Loch, which is also metioned in our deeds as the source of il (eel) for the monks of Lindores Abbey, an Abbey That the water from the Goldenloch passes,Lindores Abbey but I do know that Lindores Loch grew dramatically in size in or around the 1850s as the railway passed by it, and flooded a huge area, by putting in a sluce to control the waters for all the mills and waterwheels which are on the Kiel burn, now why is the burn leading out of Lindores called this , well the oldest fish trap in the world supposedly? Is at the down side of Lindores, hidden from view, It is called the eel house,
Look up Lindores eel house on Google,
OS Map of Eel House on Pow of Lindores (unmarked, Grid Reference 259170) – Abdie – Fife – Scotland | British Listed Buildings Lindores was mostly a bog land area, Lindores used to have an island it the middle which supposedly people lived on, and there was also a crannock settlement at an area which is next to the main road, it was allegedly no more that a few feet deep and that can be borne out by the fact that as kids, http://www.youtube.com/v/_mnQX77Y_j8?fs we used to swim over it, and our feet often touched the ground, also there used to be hundreds of poles sticking up, and barbed wire or rather the remains off, at they had been put in during the war, as Lindores Loch lay in an area that was deemed to be a stop line, hence the reason there are hundreds of concrete blocks “anti tank cubes” all over the place in fields, ive buried a few, one day some poor guy will dig up hundreds in a field and wonder what the hell was this all about, also this area has the most amazing amount of pill boxes many are still intact, but very cleverly hidden, even some of the white settlers from the south that have been here for quite a few years walk past them with their dogs and don’t realise what they are, Before I go back to the Goldenloch and how it got its name, the water that runs from the Goldenloch travels to Lindores, it goes down a type of weir which I call a monk, because that’s what I was told it was called, into a huge drain that leads into a tunnel, now this is interesting, very few people know about this tunnel, as it was found by myself and my tractor man, behind a very rotten old door, it is I assume a drainage tunnel, but it does not exist on any maps or on any reference, I have walked up it a few times but it’s a bit scary as its really old, anyway the water as it comes out this tunnel turns into a burn known locally as the priests burn,
and according to our deeds, it was all put in place in and about the 1700s by Irish labourers, to drain the beryhoille laux for the purpose of growing beetraw “red beetroot” this by Royal proclamation for the Royals staying in the nearby Falkland Palace, Places to Visit – Falkland Palace in Fife I once investigated this years ago and was told that long before Barmoral, which was a Queen Victoria thing, the Kings and Queens when visiting Scotland stayed in Falkland Palace and went hunting for wild boar, as there was non left in England, they had cut down most of the forests to build ships to fight the Spanish and the boar population had become extinct, anyway the boar that they killed in the forest of the Houf “ Howe of Fife” were slowly cooked in red beetroot this one can only assume was the recipe of some ancient Gordon Ramsay.
Anyways back to this area of land, now flooded, and due to get its first load of fish, from Iain Christie of the fishery SandyNowes nr Bridge of Earn, Iain was a friend of my father and he had a huge water problem {not enough} I went along and helped him put in a borehole, as we had put one in at the farm, the first well hit nothing and he didn’t want to spend anymore money, drilling another, but we coaxed him and would you believe it we hit an artesian spring at 90 ft, and the water just bubbled out the ground, now having been involved in quite a few boreholes I had never seen that before, Iain being a real gent gave us our first two loads of fish for free, See Picture, and they were all around the 1.5lb mark, biggies in those days, My parents lived in a house that we built on the Farm and it was called Goldenhill House after the hill in front of them which is called Goldenhill, the last hill in the range of hills known as the Ochill hills, About the Ochil Hills once a range of hills drops bellow 600ft it stops being a range, so that’s where the name comes from, nothing fancy, just a name that suits the area. Now from dads diary the first person to pay for fishing and catch, killing three, for the pricy sum of £12, was a gent by the name of Joe Killca, a veteran war pole, who came here for years on his motorbike, and on his death he left me trees and raspberries’ to plant, they are still there to this day, Joe was known by everyone and was an expert at catching fish, he actually went on to teach, now I am not sure if he is still a Scottish Champion fisher but he was, I will find out, We live at Berryhill Farm, which was a traditional family farm and as such it prospered in the 70s and 80s it was BSE that nailed it for us, as farmers, remember that nutter Prof Lacy, who predicted that if we all kept eating meat, we would be all dead in a year, or walking trailing our feet, whilst slavering down our fronts, BBC News | FORUM | Professor Richard Lacey quizzed well I had an organic suckler cow heard of 160 cows, all due to calf, and 150 year old calves and over 100 fat cattle, ready to go for slaughter, on a contact to Wm Low as organic beef, talk about all your eggs in one basket, all this was worth a small fortune to me and guess what nobody wanted any, Wm Low just waked away, it was a complete Zero, so we sold the farm to pay the debt, The Royal Bank of Scotland in my opinion deserve to go down, they gave me one month to pay back my overdraft, I would like them to pay back to us all now, in one month, what they owe us, I DID IT, and so I took over the loch from my parents and am still here, I love it and am very proud of it, its good fun but boy its hard work, I am sure some anglers wish I wasn’t here though not all are good guys, but like them over the years we all change and its not always about catching fish its about enjoying your days fishing.
Fishing and Anglers have changed so much over the years and the new breed of anglers are the best ever, what a statement, what I mean by this is in the early years, before I became actively involved in the running of the Loch, the anglers had to wiggle their cars through the farm buildings, and pay for fishing at the farmhouse, in those days the flies and tackle was nothing like it is today and I’m only talking about the 90s, rods were fibreglass or cane and interestingly no one ever broke a rod or said that their rod had just snapped for no reason, also lines and knots, back then if you caught a fish you either landed it or it came of, nowadays it was a bad knot, old line, kinked line, whatever, something that you as an angler will not be aware of is the fact that after a bad storm the amount of line with or without hooks on getting washed up is absolutely amazing, back in the day there was little or no catch and release and everyone paid for and caught fish, again back to the diary, “Put in fish to day 300 average weight is 1.5lbs, £210” and there is a little calculation written at the side which worked out that each fish cost £0.70p and also that the total weight was 450lbs the suppliers to this day never tell you how many fish you get only that they weight is, so much, now in those days it was £12 for 3 fish and 4 hours to catch them in, today its £15 for 2 fish in 5 hours then fish cost .70 p x 3 = £2.10 fish cost – £12 = profit £9.90, Today fish are 2.10 /lb x 2lbs = £4.40 / fish x 2 fish limit = £8.80 – £15 = profit £6.20 , actually that’s not to bad I am surprised I have just done the calculation again, but what is different now is, all the crazy stuff that we have to jump hoops through, Insurance, this year up 20% Health and Safety, all lifejackets need air cylinders changed at £ 5.00 Each + experts time all boats need new oars the list just goes on, anyway I seem to have digressed back to the anglers, in the 90s their was a huge interest in fishing and everyone was giving it a try, I think a lot had to do with the fact that in Fife we have a Huge, no Massive, mining fraternity and loads of those miners when up top went fishing to get away from the dark dismal mines, they went mostly to the rivers and burns that were local to there towns, after the miners strike in the 70s when they then had to go and find an alternative job, there lifestyles’ then improved dramatically and the then humble poorly paid miner started to go further afield for his sport and took with him his sons and daughters that’s when it was really good to have a fishing loch, fishing used to be in the early years generally for those that could afford to pay for it, it then became open to the masses and was ultra popular, we had some amazing characters a lot have passed away but a lot are still around and boys if you read this do come back and you’ll get a cheapy on me.
So what else has changed, the attitude of the angler, that is probably the biggest single factor, In the last few years we have seen this person become a real professional, for a start they care about the fish and the environment around them, nearly every angler can tell you what birds they have seen what the wind direction and temperature is what insects are relevant in the water why the fish are doing what they do or don’t, this never happened 10 or 12 years ago, they are now all armed with cameras (fantastic Pictures) I used to have a gallery on our website which allowed users to upload pictures too we had to remove it as people were writing obscene comments on it, (that was back 8 years ago) We used to have a big problem with rubbish, its now nothing like as bad as it used to be, anglers will tell you if something is wrong, mind you they always did that, but now its kind of different they are more on a caring attitude, however you do still get the complete Pratt, not long ago there were three guys from Dundee who fished on a pretty windy day and as they came of the water were commenting on their lack of success to me and everyone within a five mile radius, and also in the car park were four chaps who had a successful nights fishing, they watched in astonishment and disbelief at what they were seeing and hearing, and asked if this happened much, my answer was not for a long time, but they will be back, as that’s what fishing is all about, being able to get the better of something that beat you, and it brings pleasure to that person in the form of self satisfaction. Anglers are now so much better prepared, they lads that turned up in tee shirts and jeans has gone, nearly everyone to day comes with good solid clothes and proper equipment, when you watch the rods being set up its amazing to watch just how many really expensive bits of kit are in the average anglers bag, it used to be that an organised person would have maybe a good reel set up, with a floating line and perhaps an older reel in the bag or box, with lets say an intermediate line, to days guys, well for a start they have two rods, perhaps three, all with fancy metal reels and inter changeable spools, with not one or two in the bag it could be five or six and yes for each rod, and the rods, well, if technology keeps on going like it has in the past few years, we will have a big problem in the form of anglers, will not be able to let their rods go or be able to lay them down in case they blow away, they have become so light and also we as loch operators are going to have to start putting in small fish again so as to stop them breaking their rods, or maybe that’s what we are supposed to be doing that’s it we’ve come full circle