Leap of faith

The migration of Atlantic salmon is a wonder of nature and at Black Linn Falls you can see it in all its jumping glory. Each autumn, after swimming thousands of star-guided miles from feeding grounds around Greenland, the salmon work their way up rivers like the Tay and its tributaries to spawn in the breeding grounds where they were born. It’s not only swimming, but leaping, flinging, flying, as the fish repeatedly hurl themselves upstream, tackling improbable obstacles and torrents of whitewater. Astonishingly, the salmon don’t eat in the weeks they wrestle the relentless current, dropping weight and changing colour from plump silver to a deep red – a transformation known as ‘turning tartan’. And the Tay is home to some whoppers. In 1922, a 64-pounder was hauled out near Caputh, a few miles downstream of Dunkeld, by Miss Georgina Ballantine. It was the biggest ever caught by rod in Britain.