caorach
Well-Known Member
I'm not a lawyer but was always told that someone owns all the fishing. Fishing for brown trout without a permit is a civil rather than criminal offence, salmon and sea trout are different. I do most of my fishing on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides, estimates vary but we have at the very least many hundreds of brown trout lochs and the fishing on many of them is owned by large sporting estates who generally give permission to fish by default. There aren't so many other places where similar arrangements exist and so permits seem to be required for even the most remote lochs, especially as estates change hands and come into the ownership of newer European money - similar things may be happening with stalking as well I guess. I appreciate that you are asking about permits and so are looking to do the right thing but the "entitled" view that poaching is fine if the loch is remote and no one sees you seems a bit out of place to me, especially when people on this forum might reasonably take exception to people poaching on their stalking ground. My experience is that, outside of Lewis, most lochs no matter how remote will require a permit and I find this really limits the ability to just pack the rucksack and walk while having a cast on all the waters I pass.
For what it is worth I sometimes make little videos of my days on the Lewis trout lochs. You should note that with real wild fish on the moor then, generally speaking, a 1lb trout is a good fish and a 2lb fish is quite remarkable. Most lochs hold much smaller trout, maybe up to 1/4lb, and you will be catching the size of fish that the loch can produce. There are lochs that can produce big fish but on Lewis part of the sport is in finding those for yourself with the quality of trout changing over time, no one is going to be telling you where to go for them but trout in the 5lb - 7lb range are a possibility but these once in a lifetime fish will, literally, be once in a lifetime. The Uists can offer a visitor more chance of a "big" fish while doing much less work for it but in my view it isn't real wild fishing and so it doesn't really suit me. The following video was shot a few weeks back and, pretty much, I caught what I expected to catch but interestingly the 2nd loch I fish used to be capable of producing either a rare but huge fish, or even a great day of maybe 20 - 30 trout of 1lb+ for a day. There is no human influence on this loch, it sits on top of the drainage, it is just that lochs change over time:
Or for a bit of everything in less than 3 minutes this might do the job:
