I know it isn't quite hunting but there also seem to be quite a few here who fish and so I thought a quick report on my recent trip in search of trout would do no harm.

Despite the media reports of the wettest May on record those of us in the northern half of the British Isles have had an unusually dry period of perhaps nearly 6 weeks now. Lewis has been no different and I've never seen the bog so dry. Areas that are generally difficult to walk and where the average rate of progress can be low are almost a pleasure to walk at present and even some of the deadly bog holes have dried up:



Due to other committments and a rather nasty stomach upset I didn't have the stomach (literally) and time for a lot of walking to fishing. Even so in about a day and a half of fishing (probably 8 - 10 hours really) I managed to fish 11 lochs and to take fish from 10 of them. I picked my lochs carefully in view of the wobbly knee effect of the dodgy stomach and so managed all 11 lochs for not much more than 11 miles of walking, and with the dry moor it was easy walking at that. The one loch that I specifically wanted to fish was the only loch that I failed to get fish from and as you can see because of the drought the "tide" had gone out:



Some of the other lochs were in much better shape, I suppose depending on how they are fed and what they sit on, but even so sights like this were not uncommon:



The fish were still a bit thin and I suspect the cold start to the season followed by the bright blue skies of recent weeks have maybe reduced the feeding or the feeding opportunity for the fish. In truth most of the fish I was catching were quite small but the combination of a bit of a walk, remote lochs that may not have been fished this year and a bit of sport made for a great time.

The weather during the week was mixed with a northerly wind and good cloud cover for most of the time. This was certainly better than the blue skies of the pervious weeks and I'm informed that it is raining heavily tonight. Any thoughts of salmon or sea trout were put to rest with one look at the rivers which were literally dried up in many cases. I've never seen anything quite like it but hopefully we will get rain over the coming weeks to get the levels up and allow the salmon in from the seals and nets in the sea. I wonder if the dried up rivers will have any impact on the parr but hope that most of them will be in the lochs.

In the end the beach was probably the best place over the last few weeks, something the Hebrides is not short of:

Thanks for posting,

Is there much fishing to be had off of the beaches?

Last time I was in Cathness the lad that we went ferreting with said that the occasionally get some Halibut off the beach or in the bay from their little boat.

Rgds,
FB

I'm told that there is lots of fishing off the shore but with 1200 trout lochs it is not something that I've tried and I really know nothing about sea fishing. You can also get good lobster off the shore, this isn't something I've tried myself but a friend sets pots and gets me one now and again.

Actually now I think about it I've had pollock off the shore on the fly, though it was done for a laugh rather than as a serious exercise. The locals do it with a long bamboo rod with a fixed line attached to the end. I spotted this going on and for a laugh went back and got the fly rod and took them on a double salmon fly to the amusement of the locals. They were small but it gave us all a bit of fun for the evening.

To be honest there is hardly any limit to the sport you can have on Lewis with rod and gun. I've been spending September out there for years now and I always run out of time long before I run out of things to do.