Just to compliment, if that’s the right word, my recent post about the lack of fishers and fish on the Leven and Loch Lomond I thought I’d take a turn round the old haunts on the upper Endrick, so familiar to many in the old SIWG from countless days spent thereabouts catching up brood fish and planting out fry.

So, I headed out in the last fishing week of the season up to Fintry on the upper Endrick Water and quietly worked myself back downstream in an effort to see just what the situation is on the once famous Endrick. This small spate river was a place once so “stapped” with fish that many owners were so secretive about their catches that already legendary rumours of fish gluttony were inflated by the very exclusiveness of the access and the fact that no one outside the owners immediate family circles actually got the chance to fish them and see if reality lived up to the hype.

First impressions on the car journey up were there were hardly any cars parked at Coollies, two only on the day I passed, and this season I’d been told that the most that had been seen at any one time was 3 cars.

In the past, and the not so long ago past at that, there had often been up to 20 cars parked when the water was up, and probably there would be 6 to 10 cars there even on days when the water was at normal low and far from ideal.

Anyway, back to the upper reaches first, and from observation of the overgrown bankside vegetation and main access points there is practically no one fishing the Fintry stretch. I saw not a sign of any one fishing ( foot prints in the gravel, flattened grass, etc.) and for the last week of the season things looked deserted, particularly following numerous recent rises in the water.

The place was so overgrown and neglected that you’d be hard pushed to manage to get a cast out anyway, or a backcast!. The holding pool behind the Fintry sports centre, where we previously captured many a brood salmon for stripping in the hatchery, is heavily over-grown with the root ball from the tree on the opposite bank now badly encroaching on the pool ( it looks likely it will get ripped out one day this winter during a spate)

The next pool down, the Kilunan pool, is unfishable with an enclosed tunnel of trees at the head and throughout the main body completely curtailing effective casting, and the branches of trees on the opposite bank are hanging in the water over the usual taking lies, even with just a small rise in the river hight.

Further down to the Back Lade, the run into the Fintry Pot and the Pot are identical and are all just a tangled jungle of head high undergrowth and overhanging trees. Downstream at the Rabbity Burn and all the pools below it are, if anything, even worse.

The water had been up recently and had mostly cleared but still held a tinge of colour. Through all my travels I saw not a sign of a fish, either running or jumping and that tells it’s own sad story.

Under normal circumstances overhanging tree branches drop roughly a foot a year, so in the 10years + we have had of abandonment of any maintainance or pruning of trees by the committee this has completely ruined not only the fishing but safe access to the river.

I met and spoke briefly one angler here, firstly carefully ensuring that he wasn’t associated to the committee in any way, (I don’t think there’s been any committee member near the Endrick this year!!) who normally fishes further down the river and in conversation he told me he has only occasionally met the same 3 guys fishing the river so it appears there are not many fishing even further down. The droves who used to be found queuing up for a turn to fish all the holding pools and better runs after any spate from July until October have deserted, and who could blame them.

I didn’t enquire about names and even if I knew it I wouldn’t disclose it and take the chance of getting him banned by transient association, albeit unknowingly, with Bitter&Twisted. He said one of the 3 guys he met is well into his 70’s had been a member for 45 years. He had a break in membership while he worked abroad for 2 years before retiring, and when he tried to get his pensioners ticket he was told by secretary Bourhill that he was  ineligible regardless of the circumstances as he  did not have the 10 years of continuous membership to qualify for it. Officious and completely unnecessary nonsense or what? So, the result is he is a pretty pissed-off angler, even if he wasn’t expected then to fish in a jungle regardless.

Looking at the state of the river and the banks and the obvious sense of neglect and decay it exudes I think the only thing keeping the LLAIA as a club going at the moment is the money taken in annually from the coarse and pike anglers. That’s why the coarse permit continues to rise faster than any other LLAIA Ticket. Correspondingly, I think the numbers of game anglers will continue to fall alarmingly as the committee continue to piss everybody off and trust that the coarse permits will continue to make up the shortfall.

How long it will take before the LLAIA becomes  no longer financially viable as a salmon and sea trout angling club ? I don’t know, but it can’t be that long!

The Official catch report for the last month of the season tells us only two salmon and a sea trout were reported caught from the whole of the Endrick from what used to be the most productive month of the season. At the same time the River Fruin weighed in with one for the month. (Year?)

Returns from both rivers, which bear in mind are the two main spawning and nursery rivers for the whole system and are nothing short of cataclysmic and sign the death warrant of wild salmon and sea trout.

Rank the above, taken from my records of historical angling press reports, with hundreds of salmon and grilse landed in July in the ’90s and today’s recording of three for a whole month. Why anyone would even think a LLAIA season ticket is worth buying amazes me.

And so ends another demoralising season that didn’t see a salmon caught until mid June and was all over except the demoralisation by mid-July. Is that enough to let those that have overseen this outcome to believe they have the answer and still deserve their place in deciding the future of the LLAIA. I suggest not, as they have displayed a depth of moral squalor and incompetency so profound that recovery is now impossible.

I learned long ago, probably on the LLAIA Committee, that you either deal with reality yourself or reality will deal with you. The LLAIAs strategy for survival has been incoherent for a decade. Allowing any Muppet to fail upwards to fill a post he’s unfit for is cruelty. I think the best idea to come out of the committee for years is to name all the blank months in the season after committee members. We’re rapidly approaching the time where there won’t be enough months and names to go around.

At the risk of further repetition, having twice already raised this on B&T and pointed out the Crees almost uncanny identicality with the old LLAIA hatchery and fin clipped fingerling stocking program. A 20 year ago program, incidentally, that at the time was rubbished by local fishery scientists, the LLFT, the “Twa McCormicks”, the present LLAIA Secretary and committee and uncle Tom Cobbley and all.

Well, have a read at the link below and see if you think the Lomond system might just be better off today with the old hatchery and stocking regime everyone was told was inferior, no, worse than doing absolutely SFA except C&R natural stocking.

https://www.salmonfishingforum.com/threads/cree-hatchery-doing-more-good-work.286086/post-1524077

Have a look at the number of salmon captured on one catch up day on the Minnoch, in what is little more than a burn, and the percentage, in relation, of the capture of fin clipped, unmistakable and incontestable, hatchery reared returners. And as the author is careful to point out, those captured are only a small percentage, estimated at 10%, of those fin clipped fish actually present.

21.1% of fish captured for the hatchery originated from the same hatchery. TWENTY ONE POINT ONE FUKEN PERCENT. THATS OVER ONE IN FUKEN FIVE FOR THOSE ON THE LLAIA COMMITTEE. You know, the hatchery and stocking system that doesn’t work, that costs a fortune, that interferes with natural spawning, that doesn’t increase fish numbers, that produces fry that can’t survive, have small brains, two tails or three eyes, that don’t have a homing instinct, that can’t breed if the do return, that……. I could go on for days reciting all the negatives fishery scientists trail out every time someone suggests hatcheries are better than paying their EXORBITANT wages for bits of useless paper with, so far, only failed theories and continual annual declines.

At present the Lomond system has virtually no returning salmon, certainly not nearly enough to be self sustaining, and every year it gets worse. And every year the LLAIA Committee and the LLFT do exactly the same thing as they did thirty years ago, which is fuken worse than nothing At all. They put more effort into collecting catch returns than they do into anything else all year, except avoiding accidentally bumping into irate embers and having to explain themselves.

No wonder they hide. With their record of under achievement and their abysmal and easily traceable liability for the present predicament everyone involved in the last twenty years since McCormick took over promising the start of a golden age, would be better building a bomb proof safe room and climbing in. Who could face any ordinary LLAIA member with any kind of basic dignity who was even slightly responsible for the last ten years of salmon Armageddon.

It makes me so mad I could greet. We already had it all worked out in the years between 2000 and 2011 before the LLAIAs hatchery was trashed, dismantled and the equipment distributed amongst the Twa McCormicks mates at the LLFT. Nearly 20 years since then of wasted time and opportunity, where we’ve lost virtually 100% of our salmon and sea trout populations while the Committee avoided responsibility and did absolutely nothing.

Some day soon this is going to come home to roost, but it’s already too late, and those responsible are already moving on to involvement on different systems, and better positions. Or just taking up golf. The LLAIA was an unfortunate experiment, a necessary downward blip on their way to ultimate stardom, for those who now couldn’t care less and used the Lomond as a step up to their next disaster.

At least on the Cree there are enough anglers and owners with the brains, the morals and the ethics to see exactly what works and what doesn’t, and exactly who is only looking for a easy wage with minimal work and maximum influence. And, just in case anyone doesn’t recognise themselves, I’m referring to every fishery scientist I’ve ever met, and also every one I haven’t.

I hope that’s plain enough, and my hypothesis will withstand any peer review applied.

Today is the last Saturday of the 2023 season on Lomond, a day that twenty, fifteen, even ten years ago would have seen between 20 and 30 fishing boats from Balmaha pulled ashore on some selected sandy beach for the last day bash. A massive campfire would be lit, countless pans would appear with sausages, steaks, onions, etc., and everyone had his own special bottle of something warming to share round the company and loosen tongues. But that’s not happened since the emergence of the Raeburn and Bourhill influence which fragmented a previously tight knit and closely aligned community of like minded but fiercely independent individuals. There’s been no last day celebration “drum-up” since it became obvious to most of the participants that the whole ethos of Lomond fishing was dying, and every year would bring decreasing salmon and sea trout numbers and increasing disharmony.

That’s why it been so surprising that for some reason there’s been much recent interest in four articles published long ago when Loch Lomond was a place unrecognisable today, albeit that was only just over ten years ago. The articles in question are how to prepare and fish natural dyed sprats, how to modify and fish Toby’s, fly fishing on the Endrick Bank and Dapping the artificial Daddy-long-legs. 

It’s ironic that the present level of interest shown is unlikely to amount to much in the way of increased salmon and sea trout catches because each of the techniques and skills explained in the articles has become obsolete, outdated and practically irrelevant except as a record of historical events. Learning, using and acquiring the knowledge the articles were seeking to impart is not going to be of any benefit to today’s Lomond anglers because the essential element of the whole equation is missing. Namely, salmon in the spring and summer, sea trout at any time, and the once fabled massive grilse runs through July and August. All are now essentially extinct for all Loch Lomond angling purposes.

Firstly, the preserved gold dyed sprat mounted on a leaded mount and spinning vane was legendary for capturing Lomond’s spring salmon, and was the lure of choice from March until the end of May for over a hundred years. It caught some monster salmon over the years, many reports of which I have in the old Loch Lomond scrap book that for a time I reproduced on here. The gold sprat caught me my first ever Lomond springer and ever after I never fished Lomond in the spring without two, sometimes three, gold sprats on. To me it just looked the part and was much more attractive and natural than the modern Abu killer or Rapala substitutes. But who now wastes their time dying sprats, making the necessary mounts and employing the multiple swivel set up needed to avoid line twist? Where is the incentive when in the last five years the first salmon hasn’t been taken on the loch until well into June. In addition, the increase in pike numbers (which has been the flip side of the salmon decline) means carefully mounted natural sprats are mangled time and again before any salmon gets the chance to see them.

So, although Euan McGrandle’s incomparable article ( #254. So you want to try the sprat?) might still be of general interest to a few as a record of how things used to be done, it’s of no real use as a practical angling method these days. 

#151 Riverdancing Toby’s, Salmon and Lomond was the first ever “how to” article to be published on the newly introduced LLAIA Web Blog instigated by the committee under Mike Brady. It followed years of personal experimentation by myself, trial and error, refinements and practical testing. When salmon were in the Loch in numbers, specifically during the 1990s grilse runs it was deadly and out fished standard Toby tactics by a large margin. However, it needed the confidence to fully implement the whole fast trolling creed, and the ability to stick with it in the face of many others who thought the whole thing was nonsense and a Toby was a Toby regardless. It is a hunting technique rather than a sneak up on them technique and needed perseverance and manic confidence. In the right hands, and in the right place at the right time it was deadly. But that was then, when salmon were at least semi-present occasionally, rather than permanently missing, almost extinct for the purposes of traditional Lomond angling.

Neither of the above techniques, no matter how well prepared and implemented will make an iota of difference in the almost complete absence of salmon in catchable numbers.

Then there is Euan McGrandle’s fairly recent article (#262. Fly fishing for salmon on the Endrick Bank) explaining his fascination with fly fishing for salmon on the Endrick Bank. Again, up until recently it was perfectly reasonable to expect results from implementing this technique using the flies, methods and in the area described. The technique was virtually unique to Lomond and had originally been pioneered by well-known Lomond anglers around the time of WW1 and before. But again, no matter how well tied the flies are, or how carefully the depth is watched or the taking strip covered, there are so few salmon left these days that you could go a whole season without seeing one jump, never mind rise and hook one. 

And lastly Angus MacRitchie’s #259 Dapping on Lomond, his ground breaking advice and directions on how to tie and fish the deadly dapped Daddy, the artificial Daddy-long-legs which was a deadly technique for Lomond sea trout fishing, and the occasional salmon besides. Despite the lovingly explained secrets of a lifetime spent chasing Lomonds sea trout with the Daddy, you could dap the daddy for six months now and not see a rise, even from a trout. So, despite some of the information maybe being transferrable to other waters, possibly for brownies, it joins the list of now redundant knowledge passed on as a record of how it used to be when Lomond was the best sea trout fishery in Scotland, and was fished by a recognised band of enthusiasts who could hold their own in any company and yet were happy to pass on their knowledge to others.

So, regardless of how interesting the articles might be from a historical point of view they are as much good for practical purposes and as a current fishing method as t*ts on a man. A further, and until now, unrecorded consequence of the unopposed demise of Lomonds salmon population in the last decade.

There are lofts, sheds, rod rooms, etc., all over the country with long nurtured, lovingly collected, and until recently priceless items of fishing equipment which now no one wants. Who wants specialist trolling reels and rods now that there’s nowhere that trolling for salmon is worth the time and effort. Who wants old Abu Toby’s now that it makes no difference that their action was far superior than the newer Garcia type. Who needs traditional Lomond fishing boats now that the only place they were of any use has been turned into a game fish desert inhabited only by pike and jet bikes.

So, kid yourselves on if you like, but what you’re doing now isn’t Lomond fishing. That died in 2011 with the closing of the hatchery, the adoption of C&R and the rise to power of a committee that bungled from major disaster to absolute catastrophe with no thought but for their own preservation. The season just ending (2023), is without doubt the worst since the last worst, in 2022. That is if you still recognise actual reality and not the inflated, conflated, gerrymandered and false official catch returns which undoubtedly will continue to tell everyone that Lomond’s a Category 2 fishery and everything’s under control and progressing as planned.

Tell that to the majority of Lomond regulars without a salmon to their name for five years or more, or a rise from a decent sea trout for ten!!

By coincidence I had a report just last night of Balmahas 2023 last day, after the main post was completed and awaiting final polishing and publishing. It included old photos from one of the last, circa. 2015, well attended Balmaha last Saturday drum-ups and shows the popularity of the event in the days when there was still hope that something better than the present regime would surface to save at least something of the LLAIAs heritage and start to do something positive about fish stocks.

But yesterdays turn out of 3 boats, when there used to be 30, tells you all you need to know about the despair around Balmaha these days, and underlines all of what I’ve tried to convey in this article. No fish was caught, or seen, continuing the disastrous outlook from previous seasons. If it wasn’t so sad it would be laughable that the once envied LLAIA has allowed itself to be dismantled piecemeal with hardly a whimper from those most affected. The LLAIA continues its relentless march towards total collapse, it’s history no doubt to be buried in the tomb of the unknown polis perjurers.

It only remains for the ever decreasing number of Lomond regulars to decide for themselves the point where dedication finally becomes lunacy.

Sent from Outlook for Android

Members would be justified in asking what the committee are playing at with regards to their duty to maintain and enhance LLAIA owned fishing stretches. Re-wilding is the new improvement association mantra, and re-wilding of the most productive stretches is preferrable to getting their arses in gear and doing something to maintain things.

The above photo was taken on Drumtian within the last month and shows the stretch of once prime fishings acquired at great cost by Mike Brady’s committee and undoubtedly at that point one of the most productive and scenic Endrick pools. Or it used to be.

Now it’s an overgrown Amazonian jungle of a place with collapsed mature trees actually fallen in the river completely clogging and restricting the flow and creating mayhem with the traditional fish holding lies. And it’s not as if this is a recent or isolated situation. The tree shown has obviously been there for at least a year or more and there has been no attempt to remove it and salvage the pool. And after every flood it’ll get bigger as more debris gets caught up and crests even more of a damming effect.

Water flow is totally altered. The pool as shown bears little resemblance to the original layout and without doubt the productivity has suffered. But from the committee not a word, the blinkered view remains, maybe something catastrophic will happen and nature will wash it down into someone else’s stretch.

So, what are the supposedly fully committed committee spending their time on these days, because it’s obviously not river maintenance. What are the bailiffs doing? Is there any inspection of our owned fishings, any pride taken in their appearance or upkeep to maintain their market worth? Because to me it looks like a further indication of terminal decline, a complete disregard of any kind of stewardship of the LLAIA future.

Just prior to publication of this post came some right up to date news. So here it is, not that we’re likely to hear anything official anytime soon. There is now a bailiff free zone on all LLAIA waters giving an open season to anyone stupid enough to bother. As was reported previously, following the resignation of the first half the “protection” force, the LLAIA waters were being covered, if that’s the word, by a whole ONE full time bailiff, Aron McBride. Well, he’s recently been reported as signed off long term sick leave,presumably on full pay. This means there’s now no one involved in fishery protection, permit checking, bankside maintenance or any other associated baillifing tasks.

So, the opportunity exists to the massed ranks of the banned, the poachers, those excluded for speaking the truth and anyone else who attracted the personal displeasure of the committee, to get their gear looked out and have a field day.

No doubt the committee won’t be publicising anything like this which denotes bad news or otherwise abysmal management. They’ll be pretending the voluntary bailiffs, like Secretary Bourhill, will be immediately on the case and filling the void. REALLY?? Is there any evidence over the last five years of anyone on the committee doing anything voluntary except the bare minimum of kiddy-on intermittent attendance at a monthly (bi-monthly) meeting.

No, the whole system is for all practical purposes open season for a free for all assault, just when whatever precious remnants of the remains of lomond once prodigious runs need maximum protection on the Endrick and other spawning burns.

The lack of any kind of communication with members about the increasing crisis the LLAIA faces confirms that there is no one at the helm and now no one on the deck. Unless you call the recent once in three months catches report by Rip Van Liddle some kind of management input.

Anyway, myself, Alastair Mair, Derek Hughes, Sammy Burgoyne,etc., are away to set up a permanent camp on the Loch and batter seven bells out of it from now ‘till the end of October. I’ll let you know if Bourhill turns up in the bailiffs boat, maybe with “honest Jim” Raeburn as first mate and with warrant card and handcuffs in hand. Hope he has better luck than the last time he met me in Stirling Court,where he left with his tail firmly between his badly soiled ex-polis service issue drawers.

Around now should start the official LLAIA reports of the usual kipper hunt on the upper Endrick, led off, as usual, by ex-LLAIA Chairman Malky McCormick. This is an essential part of the ongoing scam to retain Lomond Cat 3 status. Without double counting the numbers of tartan, potted, sorry apologies for salmon this last few weeks bonanza supposedly produces Lomond would be Cat 10.5 and the true state of fish stocks would become unavoidably obvious to all except those with an interest in maintaining the big lie.

On the bright side, and in keeping with the usual illogical shite spouted by so called conservationists at the LLFT, now that LLAIA bailiffs are demonstrably totally extinct we might can get permission to have a bailiff hatchery to regenerate the population, whereas as long as there was still a single survivor of the endangered population it’s not deemed as serious enough to warrant anything other than monitoring and counting the last remnants.

Can’t wait until we can set up a hatchery and captive breeding program for LLAIA Committee members. But it seems they intend to hold on saving the LLAIA until the last survivor dies at 105 years of age still protesting that things have never been so good.