Obliging salmon

I have a bizarre salmon fishing story to rival Tom Adams [Letters, October issue], which also occurred on Soval Estate on the Isle of Lewis. A husband and wife team were fishing on the Laxay river. The husband, fishing the top pool, saw his wife in need of assistance on the adjacent pool.

He put his rod down by the side of the riverbank and went to help her. While they were sorting out her rod, they heard the sound of a reel. He ran back to where he had left his rod and found he had hooked a salmon, which he played and duly landed. Amazingly, his cast had blown onto the water and a salmon took and played itself without pulling the rod into the pool.

Richard Kershaw, by email