It seems a bit strange to leave home to go fishing when the thermometer shows 22 degrees below zero and there's a whole lot of snow.
I'm going to Scotland to try to get a springer. A fresh run salmon, a bar of silver.

At the airport a friend of mine picked me up and he drove me to the train station in Aberdeen. The plan was to fish some days in river Spey, a couple of days in the North Esk and then a week in river Dee.

So I took the train from Aberdeen to Elgin - a trip of about 1 ½ hours. Then taxi from Elgin to Aberlour - about 20 minutes. It was white with snow everywhere. The taxi driver told me that the trip we were driving had not gone a little earlier in the day then the road was closed due to heavy snowfalls as he said. But it worked fine.
I spent the nights at Aberlour Hotel. The Ghillie on Carron beat where I was fishing lives in Aberlour so he picked me up every morning.
The first morning the ghillie said to me that I do not need to bring a fishing rod. It is unfishable at Carron. Did not believe him so I said I will bring my rod so let us see. And when we arrived I realized what he meant. He was actually right. We walked around to have a look. The week before it had landed two feet of wet heavy snow. Many of the trees were broken and were halfway out in the river. The water temperature was minus 4 degrees so it was ice from the river bank and several feet into the river. Difficult to walk over and scary to walk on as you didn’t know what was underneath. And it was not so thick that it held.

 

 

Carron river Spey the 13th of February 2009