Swapping roles

On Monday, 21 August 2017 I was fishing the Marge Pool of the Dounie Beat of the Sutherland Carron when I hooked a very angry salmon. My godfather, Charlie Seligman, was with me and was all set to be my net man. After some leaps and twice being down to my backing during a 40-minute fight, I was getting ready to bring it to the net when disaster struck – it had gone. Feeling sick, I told Charlie the nylon had snapped. He started to commiserate but then pointed to my line floating in the water, waded in and picked it up. It turned out the nylon had not snapped – it was the link between two sections of the floating line that had separated. The fish was well hooked, so now my netsman had the fish on the end of the line in his hands. Roles were reversed as he

handed the net to me. After a lot of cursing from the “linesman” and my recently appeared dad, I netted it.

I am hoping your readers might be able to answer two questions for me:

1) Is it my fish or my godfather’s? (This is important as we are presently level pegging but if it’s mine that puts me ahead); 2) Have any of your readers heard of a similar story?

PS: my dad took a video of Charlie hand-lining the fish in, just in case no one believed us.

Tom Hunter, aged 12, by email