Silver on a tin budget

Can you fish for salmon without having the expensive tackle? Matt Cross tries his hand using his old trout set-up on a cheap ticket

Everyone knows that if you want to catch a salmon you had better have some cash at your disposal, and if you want to catch it on the fly you had better have some serious cash.

First you have to get a big, doublehanded rod and a fancy reel. Then you need an entire set of lines and the services of a specialist to work out which ones will “load your rod to achieve incredible distance and perfect turnover”. You will also need a huge net and a special priest. Finally, there are flies that cost four times as much as trout ones. This is all before you buy a ticket; if you want to get on a good piece of water then that will cost as much as a second-hand Ford Focus.

I don’t have any of that stuff. I have a Sonik No.7 10ft single-handed fly rod with a Greys reel. The latter long ago lost the wee knob for tightening the drag and it doesn’t fit properly on the rod so occasionally falls off.

I have a small collection of Cortland 444 fly lines, including one that I am convinced is a 7wt sink tip but my rod seems to think is at best a No.5. I have what broke anglers all over the country have — a mismatched stillwater trout setup cobbled together from ebay.

I also had £60 hidden from my wife in a box of dominoes, a spirit of adventure, that second-hand Ford Focus and a plan to see if this ragtag crew could catch me a salmon.

There was also my secret weapon — a salmon fisher, riverkeeper and gillie who happens to be a friend. Gordon Macdermid spent five years as a project officer at Ayrshire Rivers Trust before moving to take charge of the fishing at the Wellesley family’s Dalreoch estate. There is not much about salmon fishing that Gordon doesn’t know. He thought that the idea of going after a salmon with a single-handed rod wasn’t nearly as stupid as it sounded.

“People do it all the time,” he said. “You’ll have trouble if you get into a really big fish, but apart from that you’ll be fine.”

He also helpfully informed me that £50 would buy me a day ticket on his beat of the river Stinchar, a lovely spate river in the southwest of Scotland, and suggested that a few flies and some 15lb nylon would complete my tackle. The domino box stash wouldn’t quite do it, but

18 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE Gordon Macdermid casts his LTS Valhalla 12ft No. 6 rod and Vision Tank reel at Greenbank pool and attracts the first pull of the day — early evidence of a fish

if I bulked it out with a fiver from my jeans, I’d be there.

Fishing a spate river is a chancy business; you must hit the height of the water just right. Too high and the fish will power past; too low and they lie around like socks in a drawer. By sheer good luck I hit it right. When I met Gordon on the bank of Dalreoch’s Craig Pool, the river level was at 2ft and dropping gently.

I looked at the pool, I looked at my gear, I felt outclassed. To reassure

“Hit the water too high and the fish will power past; too low and they lie around like socks in a drawer”

Matt Cross considers his fly choice for the first pool of the day with Gordon Macdermid (left)