|
|
||
I remember going through a certain town and telling my father that he`d taken a wrong turning. He should have gone to the right instead of the left. But I was wrong. I had misread the signpost. Then there was a family in another car which passed us and later we saw them having a picnic at the side of the road and we gave them a hoot on the horn and they waved back.
We arrived safely late at night at Badfluich in Altas
and were welcomed by Heccy (short for Hector) and Aunt Nellie. Aunt Nellie
was my father's cousin who had married Heccy MacKintosh. Hughie their
son would be about 20. Hughie showed us how to fish for trout in the burn
that ran through the glen a 100 yards from Badfluich. He made us rods
from the branches of a tree - probably the rowan tree - and we bought
hooks and fishing line at the wee shop which was also a sub post office
in Altas.
The lines were wound round and round the ends of the rods. Hughie put
a worm on the hook for me. I was never any good at putting a worm on a
hook.
Later on when I was at Gateside I tried fishing in the burn there (the
Green Water) and told my Uncle Robert of my difficulty in getting a worm
on a hook and he said to me,
"How would you like to have someone put a hook through you?"
That remark got home to me. I felt a sort of empathy with the poor worm.
But I`ll never forget catching my first trout. Hughie had shown us the place to fish - just down where the water was gurgling into the next pool. I felt the rod being pulled and I jerked the line out of the burn excitedly and the trout at the end of the line kept swinging round and round - I was so excited. I suppose Hughie must have taken over and brought the flying trout to the ground. And it was a beauty! Hughie knew just where to cast, at the places where the trout are waiting for food. I never caught another, at least not with rod and line.
Ten years later I spent a holiday on my own at Badfluich
and one day went for a walk down the side of the same burn. I could scarcely
believe my eyes! There in a big pool was a salmon!
I decided to dam up the exit from the pool where it was quite shallow
before it ran down into the pool below. In the pool were three big boulders
that I used to follow the salmon and every now and then reached down trying
to catch it - then I fell in!
It was about three feet deep so once I was in I stayed in and splashed
about chasing the salmon to the exit! When it was in the trap I caught
it by the tail expecting a great struggle but it went limp!
In the same pool I also caught a sea trout, again with my hands, of course.
I took my catch home to Badfluich and had my photograph taken holding
the salmon ( a 7 pounder) in my right hand and the sea trout in my left
hand.
Hughie had never known a salmon to be in that burn. He wondered how the
salmon could have got there as there was some sort of barrier where the
burn goes into the Kyle of Sutherland. He thought that it must have come
up when the burn was in spate and then when the spate was over became
stranded in the pool.
[Extracted from "The Jone Cratur" © John Holmes Johnson 2000 - available in paperback from the author - price £5 (five pounds sterling) plus packing & postage.
To order your copy, email John Johnson: