Perfect Spring Salmon Fishing

By Jock Monteith 24th April 2018

There's only ever going to be one end result from placing a highly experienced River Tay 'precision' boatman armed with his favourite Spring lures along with an experienced salmon fisher on the back of a settling river during April. However in yesterday's case there were two perfect end results!

The Dunkeld House Salmon Beat

While normally this perfect middle River Tay Spring holding water would benefit from 2 skilled boatmen working the beat daily through the Spring months this year the fishing has been expertly conducted by Head Ghillie Gordon Pollock on his 'Jack Jones' who personally notched up his 14th Spring fish encounter yesterday (of 17 caught from the beat so far) in true Tay form with perfect 18 & 22lbs salmon. If you ever want to see a display of precision traditional River Tay 'harling' then Dunkeld House is certainly one of those Tay venues where this 'craft' can be observed in great detail.

Investment In The Dunkeld House Beat Facilities

Last December saw this famous middle Tay salmon beat being purchased by 2 fanatical London based property tycoons who are now further investing an additional six figure sum into new facilities on the Dunkeld House beat including a new luxury fishing hut, 2 new traditional (larch built) Tay coble boats, 3 new Yamaha 4 stroke engines and a vast array of other beat & fishing day improvement plans to make the Dunkeld House salmon fishing experience one of the very best in Scotland for all visiting salmon anglers. Great stuff indeed and brilliant to see significant investment going into Scottish salmon fishing and no doubt there will be more to follow on other Scottish salmon beats.

Why Dunkeld House Holds Salmon

It's not rocket science to understand exactly why this beat does particularly well during the high water Spring months. After running salmon have pressed their noses to the stop/start high pressure streams that lie on most Tay beats between Dunkeld & Perth then the lower end of the Dunkeld House beat from the hotel to the Cathedral offers salmon true respite just like a 'Holiday Inn' would do for an exhausted traveller! Even the 350 yard powerfully fast stream immediately downstream of the Dunkeld Bridge lower beat boundary to the neck of the Ferry Pool upstream of Eastwood House is enough to 'puff out' even the fittest of running salmon forcing them to stop at the Dunkeld House beat's Gauge Tree Pool in higher water or the Cathedral Stream during lower water.

Yesterday's Beautiful Spring Salmon

Both of yesterday's 'harled' Spring salmon were perfectly conditioned and while not carrying sea lice both had clearly only been in the river about a week. The big salmon that have been consistently caught on the Tay just about every day since the 2018 salmon season got underway is 'truly' great to see. Fish of this class are what made the Tay famous and although there's much negative publicity surrounding Scottish salmon fishing at this time primarily due to the boffins not being able to accept, enhance or even properly protect God's 'cyclical' way of managing his stocks it is truly amazing that no one is really properly promoting the return of big Spring salmon this year on Scotland's largest and most famous salmon river.