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Glad you enjoyed it, landing them when you are alone when they have to come onto the bank and you can't get into the river can be a bit of a struggle but it is part of the sport. It is a lot easier if there is someone to help you net them.

September is a good time to visit, but then I'm biased as I like the back end fishing, and our sea trout can run quite late in many places so you are in with a good chance of fresh fish. I can only really comment on Lewis as there are a lot of lochs and salmon/sea trout systems there so I've no reason to travel. For September sea trout then the obvious answer is the Gress Angling Association facebook.com/groups/486184075257389/ water as the runs on Gress tend to be later and September tends to be their best month. You can get day tickets, or even better get a season ticket for £25 and that is you set up for sea trout, salmon, and brown trout. Unfortunately I don't really have any "good" Gress videos as I haven't been fishing Gress as much as in the past just through circumstances but it is a good fishery. In part the advantage of Gress is that if the water is low then the salmon and sea trout will lie in the saltings area waiting to run the river and if the water is high then there will be fish in the pools on the river. This gives the advantage of fishing in almost all conditions. The club are super friendly so drop them a message and they will give you all the info you need, there is so much fishing on Lewis that no one is keeping secrets. If you wanted some estuary fishing then the Fideach Angling Club fideachangling.co.uk/ have estuary fishing for salmon, sea trout, and slob trout close to Stornoway. The Steinish Pool is quite heavily fished in the sense that you might have to share it but in truth it can be great fun and a great social event plus the pool is sometimes stuffed with fish, they are hard to get in the salt water but it can make for an exciting few hours. If you might also be interested in a salmon (plus many good trout lochs) then the Stornoway Angling Association syangling.com/ have really good salmon fishing on the River Creed. Unlike a lot of association fishing it is rarely crowded except, perhaps for a few of the pools in the Castle Grounds but I never fish there as I like the pools up on the moorland. If you have a 7 weight single hander that will do for salmon, I use an 11ft rod in a 7 weight for everything including spring salmon and many, maybe most, salmon are taken on what you might consider trout flies so your trout gear will do for salmon. You can get day tickets or season tickets and access is easy to many pools, but you can also have a good walk if you wish. There are also 2 salmon/sea trout lochs on the system with boats and they can be very productive. The SAA also have a goodly amount of trout fishing that is mostly close to the road and perhaps their most productive loch would be Loch Achmore - it has a boat and so if you wanted a day of boat fishing it would be an ideal spot. It appears in quite a few of my videos but I always fish it from the shore and by the nature of the loch I'd say the boat outfishes the shore by maybe 10 fish to every 1 on the shore angler would get. The fish are good quality and usually in the 3/4lb - 2lb sort of size. There are about 1000 other trout lochs and in one sense you are only limited by how far you want to walk and your willingness to explore. Many of these lochs are rarely, or never, fished. Generally speaking you will find lochs that produce large numbers of smaller fish, or lochs that appear empty but occasionally produce a monster, and in many cases no one knows until they go and fish the loch. I can't document a lot of trout lochs as it would take 1000 pages but one example that is close by the road might be Loch Raoinebhat in Shawbost. This loch has a reasonable head of modestly sized trout of maybe 1/2lb - 3/4lb but it also holds a few monsters with the biggest I've heard of recently being 11lb. Despite appearances it is a deep loch (60ft) and it falls away from knee depth to 30ft in a single step so don't wade it. The big fish tend to be caught at night on the worm or spinner so you have to expect them to very much be a bonus, but they are there and they will take the fly. The loch has a Norse Mill at one end, where there is parking, and there is also a completely unexcavated and unvisited stone circle should you be interested in such things. The last video I made there is here: czcams.com/video/F7njKCxCwts/video.htmlsi=BJU5rX0cNBsIiFrc After all that I'm going to give you the most important info - talk to Donnie the Angling Promotion Officer. You can email him on donnie@ohft.org.uk and you should also take a look at the Fish Hebrides web site: www.fishhebrides.co.uk/ Donnie talks to all the ghillies and anglers across the Hebrides and he personally has fished just about every river and loch on the islands so he is a mine of info and I'd often pop in to see him and to ask for suggestions and he never fails to come up with somewhere interesting that I've never fished before. If you are looking flies then get in touch with John Maclean and he can do you up a few local patterns that will get you fish: facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057469959391

@@caorach3354 thank you so much for taking the time to answer i will have already been in touch with John Maclean and purchased some fly patterns. Cannot wait to get up to the Islands and hopefully connect with my first sea trout or two!! Bob

Glad you enjoyed it, it seems such a long time ago now but nice to have the videos to look back on.

Hi William, I'm sort of winding down on the videos in part because my GoPro gear is starting to become a little unreliable with age, water, bashing about etc. I did order an Insta360 Ace Pro but the video quality out of it was awful, much worse than my GoPros, so it got returned. Lots of good reviews of it on CZcams but when I tried it myself it was a completely different story. The problem is GoPro don't have a waterproof solution for attaching an external microphone and I don't want to invest in a camera that, as with my current GoPro, pretty much doesn't work on a wet day. So, at least in part, the fact that I've got unreliable gear and nothing suitable with which to replace it is driving me towards stopping with the videos. I did a few videos in the Spring, then was busy and had a really nasty dose of covid, and since that I've not been fishing. I hope to get some fishing in September/October as I like the back end fishing and there might be some videos of that but it all depends on the gear keeping working and that could go either way 🙂

I did try to reply, honest :-) No idea what happened but I'm pleased that it worked for you and made your time outdoors more comfortable. It is good stuff but, as you say, some midges will still land on you before immediately flying off again. Some people are badly bothered by this without ever actually being bitten so for them a net is the only solution.

Pretty early for the creed in June but currently there's no water however the moor is pretty wet so any rain that does fall won't be soaking into the moor. Like everywhere else it is cold but the trout seem to be at least feeding a bit, I guess they've no choice, so they can be worth a cast.

@@caorach3354 I know you obviously get some up in June but know from speaking to the likes of Robbie bell and old Callum when he was on the river it can be slow for salmon in June but 1st 2 years after lockdown when I was up you could walk through the bend pool and not get your feet wet. Last year wasn't a lot better

@@colind8525 there is a bit more water this year plus the moor is currently mostly wet so if rain came there is a decent chance it would lift the river. I don't know if there is any sign of fish yet. Usually I don't pay much attention to the salmon until September but it is currently cold for trout with a forecast of two degrees in places tonight so there isn't much motivation to go to trout. I had a quick cast yesterday and had one reasonable trout and I've been hearing of people getting reasonable trout so I guess they have to try and feed no matter how cold it is. If the wind comes out of the north I'll give the trout a go later in the week but salmon currently seems not worthwhile.

Glad you enjoyed it David. Lewis has never been known as a spring fishery and as far as I know there was 1 fish caught this year between the opening on 11th Feb and the 1st June. Given this I consider that I did quite well to see one, and fail to hook one. We are also lucky that, certainly so far, there isn't any queueing to get onto the rivers even when there are grilse in the systems. Part of what saves Lewis is that it was always a very exclusive destination for salmon and so it never really marketed its fishing so the people who knew were invited and everyone else was of the view that there were no opportunities for mere mortals. On top of this it is a bit more of a journey to Lewis than to the "well known" spots plus some of the fishing can require walking many miles across rough and remote ground. Most anglers simply aren't willing to put in any effort and, largely, they want guaranteed catches for zero effort. These days there is good access to a lot of Lewis fishing, though the ferry trip across to the island remains as a deterrent, but compared to most places even the popular spots remain lightly fished compared to similar places on the mainland. I have to guess that as salmon numbers decrease, and competition to catch the few that are left increases, then Lewis will see increasing numbers of fishing visitors. I think there is already a slight uptick in visiting anglers on the island looking for fishing but overcrowding isn't a problem as yet. So, you make some interesting points that will probably become more relevant with time. From my perspective then I usually only fish for salmon right at the end of the season once the trout fishing is pretty much over, last year I think it was about 23rd September before I had my first cast for a salmon, so if the salmon fishing starts to get crowded (and I have no reason to believe that will happen) then I can simply just stick to the trout fishing :-)

I hope it helps you Dan - keep in mind that the spaced omni method works better if there is more distance between the mics than I illustrate in the video. Because I want a lightweight and portable solution I made my bar between the mics pretty short. This is fine as I'm just recording wild track effects so I get away with it but for some material then you'd need to make the bar a bit longer to get realistic stereo. I did a 2nd video on basically the same subject and it might be worth checking out as well as there is more detail and info in it, plus better demos of the sound: czcams.com/video/D9vGXMlyjdo/video.html

@@caorach3354 The way you demonstrated it in the video would work perfect for my needs. I'll have a look at your other video too. Thanks again!

I've only ever seen it applied to clothing, perhaps it isn't suitable for application to skin? I don't know. Wearing clothing that has been treated with permethrin certainly seems effective against ticks as it seems to discourage them from crawling about in the clothing and eventually ending up on your skin but it doesn't keep the midges off exposed skin.

Yes, up to 4 hours for ticks

People have varying tolerance to midges, it isn't uncommon to see people badly bothered by them and not have a single bite as the mere presence of the midge is enough to annoy them. Icaridin seems pretty effective against most insects and I've found it keeps the horse flies and clegs off as well as the ticks. The biggest single reduction in ticks I saw was to start wearing gaiters so if ticks are bothering you that is a worthwhile exercise. The science is that Icaridin is as effective as deet and my personal experience would support that. Icaridin is the active chemical in Smidge so if Smidge isn't working for you then Icaridin certainly can't perform any better but having a big bottle around the house and lots of little bottles in pockets etc. certainly works for me.

@@caorach3354 oh for sure! I get the most bits out of anyone I know but don’t react (just a red spot for a few hours). My wife probably gets 20% of the bites I get but reacts much worse to them. Ticks seem to be similar, I get loads, my wife has only ever had one.

That was the last day of my "spring salmon fishing." The truth is Lewis doesn't get a spring run and their total spring catch this year - 11th February until end of May - was 1 fish. However it was too cold for trout fishing and I really enjoyed the 4 days out. If you hunt around there should be another 3 spring salmon videos out there, including one where I actually managed to lose a fish! This particular fishing spot is actually right by the road, you can see the local church behind me in some of the shots, so it isn't at all remote but the moorland is quite bleak and dangerously soft in places so it does require some thought and care to fish the more remote spots.

It isn't a silly question at all - when salmon come in fresh from the sea they tend to be bright silver in colour but the longer they are in fresh water they slowly get darker. I enjoy fishing at the end of the season and at that time of year the fish have all been in the river for some time so they have become very dark in colour. Fish in this condition are no good for eating, and they can be very grumpy and hard to get to take the fly, and so many anglers prefer to fish for fresh fish that are just in from the sea. On Lewis most of our salmon run in July and at that time of year all the fish caught will be bright silver but usually I don't fish for them until the end of September or even October. If salmon are held in the sea, say by very low water in the river, then they can also take on a darker colour in the sea but generally speaking it is true to say that they get darker once they run into the rivers.

It is a lovely place Tony, and right by the road so it is a really handy spot. Further up the river it becomes a bit wilder and more remote and it is fed from a huge and convoluted system of lochs. It isn't a system that I know at all and last year was the first time I explored the upper part of the river, as well as being extensive the system is extremely varied. I did a little video of the upper parts of the river last season: czcams.com/video/D-Uo50zznT8/video.html

@@caorach3354 yes I think I did watch that video, more exploring to do then?

You did well to get one, never mind 7 if the river was coloured! Well done. When salmon fishing I think everyone depends on hope especially when the fish are ignoring us.

Conditions in May can often be like that and it really does put an end to the fishing, but sometimes you get lucky. It is a shame that it just didn't work out for you this year.

The trout fishing tends to go well in the Uists at this time of year so you should be in with a good chance of decent fishing as I think the wind is to come to the south and west over the next few days giving milder conditions. Up on Lewis the salmon and sea trout fishing tends to over-shadow the trout fishing plus physical access to our trout can require a lot of walking so our trout fishing isn't so well known, or obvious, as in the Uists but I've seen a lot of decent fish getting caught in the Uists recently so you should soon be in the fish.

I am kind of unwilling to name most of the places I'm fishing unless they are club waters as, apart from anything else, I don't represent or wish to misrepresent the estate waters I get to fish. Lewis estates don't let spring fishing, for example, simply because the chance of a fish is almost zero so the fact that I'm catching nothing in the recent videos doesn't reflect on the quality of these rivers once the grilse run begins. Also I would sometimes do stuff out of interest but that no sane person actually wanting to catch a fish would do - if you tell me a fish has never been caught from a certain loch then that is almost certainly where I will spend the next week fishing just to see if there isn't a way to manage it even if the neighbouring loch is stuffed with fish :-) In view of the fact that very few people read comments I don't think there would be any harm in posting a link to the website of the estate on which this river is located as that let's them speak for themselves: www.sovalestate.co.uk/

I would quite often use the muddler Andrew, I have a sort of feeling that the tradition of the Orange Muddler on the bob position for a salmon might have been a Lewis thing and certainly if there is a decent wave on the loch or river it can be most effective. I tend to fish more for trout and over the past few years have only really had a cast for salmon right at the end of the season so I've almost always been fishing the fly a bit deeper - even a tube on a sinking line. For that reason there isn't much, if any, muddler action in my videos. I think the current trend for using a "hitch" fly for salmon is basically someone trying to reinvent using the muddler. A couple of days back I stumbled upon this video, both these rivers appear in some of my past videos, and as you can see the muddler is a well recognised technique: czcams.com/video/Ild3C_7dweA/video.htmlsi=IUHE9V1Dgbe1FX1j

It is a nice spot Chris, there are some other places that I prefer but it is just a personal preference thing. However I only walked a few hundred yards that day and you can see how varied the fishing was with both the loch and river. This is the lower part of the river that appears in this video: czcams.com/video/D-Uo50zznT8/video.html

I hope you'll have a good week and thank you for your kind comments, though it must be said that maybe I might benefit from catching a few more fish :-) I'm currently not fishing at the minute and am away working so I won't be about next week but hopefully conditions will be good for the trout - the water is generally a bit too low just now to be bothered trying for salmon. Lewis is traditionally very dry and sunny in May and June so they can be difficult months but if the conditions work out they can also be fantastic months for trout in particular.

In a way this is a nearly impossible question Chris as there are just so many lochs to chose from. Obviously Loch Achmore (A Stornoway Angling Association loch) can be a great loch plus you can make a whole day out by fishing the 3 other SAA lochs that are just a short walk from each other beyond Loch Achmore. In Shawbost Loch Raoinebhat is right beside the road and holds some very large fish, though they are hard to get and mostly you'll be catching 1/2lb fish. The two lochs by the road in the village of Breacleit on Bernera can also produce great fish, fish usually in the 1 - 2lb size and sometimes 20+ for a day, but they've been getting a lot of fishing recently so I think the fish might be harder to get this season. North of Stornoway then if you have a 4WD (I mean something on AT tyres and with decent clearance designed for the job etc. don't go out here on road tyres) there are a lot of lochs north west of the track up the River Gress and they all hold fish, you'll need to be fit to walk the moor though and the quality of each loch changes over time so no one is going to tell you their current "secret loch" but it can be a great adventure to find out - many of these lochs are rarely fished so if you do find one producing good numbers of 5lb fish then you might be the first to have discovered that it has "improved." If you go right to the end of the road through Tolsta and park at Garry Beach just down the hill from the Bridge to Nowhere then you can walk north from there and have a selection of maybe 40 lochs, providing you are fit. Don't take a car past the Bridge to Nowhere, a 4WD will go out the track but you are going to struggle to get turned and might have to reverse the whole way back. The lochs out here, as with everywhere, vary and the fishing changes over time so it is a matter of exploring. The best advice is to contact the fishing promotion officer in the Fisheries Trust. Donnie speaks to a lot of ghillies, keepers, and anglers almost every day and so usually knows where is fishing well plus he can take into account your ability to walk, navigate, etc. Drop him an email: donnie@ohft.org.uk

@@caorach3354 Thank you so much! I will contact Donnie! This was extremely helpful.

It was really weird that I had nothing at all for the day, not even a trout! Sometimes you get days like that I guess. We are so lucky to have such wonderful places to fish.

The season opened on 11th Feb Billy and as far as I know there has been one single fish caught, a couple of weeks back. This video was shot about 25th April and at that stage, apart from the fish I lost in the previous video, I think that was the total action for the island for the season. So you can get the idea that spring fish are not at all common and I really am not joking when I say that catching one is some sort of miracle. They are so rare that I was even pleased to lose one in the previous video as that seems like a major success compared for fishing for 20 years and never even seeing one :-)

We are very lucky to have such interesting places to fish Andy. This spot is so handy because it is right by the road so I didn't even have to walk!

As with anywhere the permits depend on where exactly you want to fish. The best thing to do is contact Donnie, the angling promotion officer for the Hebrides, as he can always point people in the right direction for some handy fishing: donnie@ohft.org.uk Another option is to contact the Stornoway Angling Association as they have a lot of fishing for trout, sea trout, and salmon and they usually respond to messages very quickly. You can either go to their web site or their facebook page: facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063594636426 or syangling.com/

@@caorach3354 thats excellent thank you

It is a fantastic river Norman and a really great place to fish. To be honest spring fish are so rare that even losing one still feels like a "success" as at least I found one!

With me they should call it "standing about waving a stick!"

@@caorach3354 John Gierach . Great writer

Demonstrating my superior skills for completely failing to catch a fish :-)

I got lucky, and unlucky :-) In view of the rarity of springers I was pleased to even have a brief encounter with one. It was disappointing to drop it but it was a great day out and I'm chalking it up as a successful day!

Springers are so rare that even losing that one felt like a success - the fact that I was able to find something that pretty much doesn't exist is strangely satisfying even if I dropped it. Usually I might have a cast for a springer once every 2 - 3 years but with it being so cold I had 4 days this year when I went instead of going to trout. This video was my best chance and I blew it! Our salmon opens on 11th Feb and there has been one fish caught, last Saturday, and that might be the total for the season so I'm being entirely truthful when I say that they, basically, don't exist. Despite this and the fact I rarely fish for them I've been lucky with them and if you are interested then this short video was shot in 2017, before the GoPro and so on: czcams.com/video/EZj06-BUniE/video.htmlsi=TmWs2VQmt1Jpr_Sr I'm sure there will be some complaints about netting the fish onto the bank etc. but in this location there was no choice and it was best to get it out of the water, and back in ASAP, rather than doing all that thrashing about stuff you sometimes see. As you can see it swam off before I could even get the camera into my hand.

@@caorach3354 that’s great I’ll check the link. Same here on Skye, I don’t know anyone that tries other than opening day, there probably are people but yes i get how rare they are. Even our summer/autumn runs are rare! I think it’s great you have a go though and congratulations to the person that got that first of the season. Hope they bought a lottery ticket. Tbh I like watching that river you were on, what a cracking looking spate river, but then again so many of the ones you fish are. Best of luck for the rest of your season, I’ve been managing the odd short go but may seems to have passed me by a bit so far!

Bad luck Alan, frustrating to lose two but I hope you will get one. I rarely fish for springers, just because we don't get them on Lewis, so this year was an exception simply because it was too cold to get out for trout. I've been very lucky with them but to put things in perspective we have about 30 salmon systems and there has been one springer caught this year.

@caorach3354 I've a pal who has family on Lewis, he visits them in July/August, he said the sea trout and grilse was poor last summer.

@@alancarpenter4068 Unlike the rest of the UK Lewis had a pretty dry summer last year and that caused significant problems for the angler as the rivers were pretty much unfishable throughout the majority of the normal season. I think it was 23rd September before I had my first cast for a salmon last year, water just wasn't there before that. I think that in some places sea trout numbers were down, but they've been crashing almost everywhere for quite a few years now, but Gress actually had really good catches of sea trout and I think September was a really good month for them. The first day I went out for salmon I landed a fish but I also lost two plus had lots of really weird takes that I'm sure were salmon but they just weren't connecting, this was on the River Creed, so there seemed to be a reasonable head of fish in the river. However, my feeling is that the actual run of fish wasn't great but that it wasn't a disaster either. If you haven't seen it then my first day out for salmon last year is in a video: czcams.com/video/CcG-Bq1DeF4/video.html

It is a wonderful river Christopher, and it is always great to get a day out even if the chances are vanishingly small. I think that this estate is contributing to a research project so I have to guess that we won't get to see the results until the research is published and I've no idea when that will be.

I didn't think to change the fly but did cover him a few more times with what I had on, just in case. I think the chances of them coming back is very slim but I also know that an aggressive salmon will sometimes do quite remarkable things so it was worth putting the fly over the same spot a few more times throughout the day just in case. Stranger things have happened :-)

Hard to believe it is nearly that time of year again!

I've been very lucky with Lewis springers David, and even seeing one or losing one counts as a big success, but am being entirely truthful when I say that they are basically unknown - the season opened on 11th Feb and so far the one, and only, fish was caught last Saturday and it wouldn't be at all unusual for it to be the only springer of the year. When you consider we have maybe 30 salmon systems it does highlight that we simply don't have a spring run. I enjoy a spring day out, as do a few other local anglers, just to get out with the rod and it is very relaxing fishing as there is no real expectation of catching a fish but I'm the first to admit that it is pretty much madness to fish for something that almost certainly isn't there.

To be honest we get so few springers that even failing to hook one like that is a major success story :-) Also it does add to the sport - if it was simply a matter of hooking and landing them then I'd probably do something else but dropping the occasional one keeps me keen.

That is part of the fun, there are some lochs where you can catch lots of fish but it is always nice to have a bit of a challenge. No one fishes this loch as it is relatively remote and I think there aren't many fish in it, I can't explain that but it looks to be the case, plus the fish are small. I have camped at it and watched it on calm days and so on and the fish are always rising in the same handful of spots and I also tend to catch them in these spots. So I have concluded that the loch isn't full of fish distributed all over the loch but that there are a relatively small number of fish confined to a few favoured places.

Glad you enjoyed it Chris, CZcams does all sorts of funny and random things that make no sense to me. I had a video shot at the end of last season in which I was exploring a new (to me) salmon river. Nothing at all happened in the video but for some mad reason it got 44k views mostly in a few days! Completely random when 1k or 2k views would be good performance for a video.

I think they call it "going viral", sounds a bit nasty to me😃

@@chrismatthewsflyfishing7724 I'll rub some of that stuff the doctor gave me on it and see if it clears up!

It's a phase I'm going through. What can I say?

Thank you Christopher, not many fish on the day but I didn't expect it with the cold wind but it is great to get a day out at the trout again. Now the weather has warmed up a bit I will hopefully manage a few more days, though it might be the end of June depending on how things go for me. There are a few more salmon videos to come as the cold weather put me off fishing for trout.

Glad it was helpful. Smidge is easily available off the shelf in many places and the active ingredient is the same - icaridin - so it might be easier for you to pick up than the Hedgewitch stuff especially if you are only going to be exposed to the midges for a day or two, or perhaps not at all. The big icaridin bottles are good when you are out all the time and so get through loads of it in a season :-) I hope you enjoy the trip and, with just a tiny bit of thinking and planning, there's no reason the midges should cause you any significant problems.

@@caorach3354 thank you for advice!

That did cross my mind but up there I think it unlikely and I'm pretty certain it was a salmon. It isn't clear on CZcams but i could see the big dorsal fin moving around in the wave and it was looking exactly like the salmon when they are in the sea and just about to head up the river. My best guess is that my line annoyed it and, perhaps, the reason why it did so much swirling about was because it actually came over the groyne/croy to register its annoyance and so had to almost break the surface to get over the groyne. This might explain my initial confusion as to what was going on. This spot is a well known lie for a springer, should there ever be a springer come into the system, so that also tilts the probability in favour of a salmon. So, you could be right but my feeling is that it was a salmon rather than mullet especially as this is a goodly distance up a spate river and it isn't the sort of water I've known mullet come up.