Stealth & Salmon Lies

By Jock Monteith 6th March 2023

There are many good opportunities to catch salmon blown each year in Scotland by salmon anglers who rush straight into a salmon pool far too quickly and without much thought. Here's a typical example of how close to a riverbank salmon often are.

Salmon Have Great Radar

Any fish that's survived the perils of juvenile river life for 2 or 3 years from the constant imbalanced daily assault from brown trout, goosanders, mergansers, cormorants & otters is one smart little creation if you truly think about that fact. Predation control for juvenile salmon these days is at an all time low on most Scottish salmon rivers so any juvenile salmon that actually survives early river life in the river should be on the New Year honours list! Don't underestimate a salmon's ability to sense any type of predator as they are forced to become 'true masters' from a very early age.

Juvenile Salmon In River Protection

Maybe on the face of things this could be misconstrued as a biased statement but juvenile salmon have a hard time of it due to over cautious laws that protect and allow other creatures to dominate & flourish that serve little or zero benefit to Scotland's rural economies. It's like a failed IQ test for Government & all of the other wild life quangos who've not provided enough sensible basic protection of our juvenile salmon and have allowed the systematic demise of the once 'huge' annual Scottish salmon smolt migrations to head to the sea. Then there was the conveniently created 'false narrative' that 'ocean mortality' is the only issue affecting salmon stocks when the returning adult salmon numbers inevitably started dropping even though no measures have been put in place to safeguard the known salmon migration routes as a deterrent against commercial exploitation.

Salmon Need A Careful Pool Approach

With the perils of in river life predation that salmon instantly have to adjust to or be 'snaffled' it's no wonder they require a careful fishing approach most of the time. Their dark backs and their tendency to enjoy lying up often in areas that are very close to the edge of the river make them virtually invisible and easy to spook by a salmon fisher who's not thinking about where fish could be holding in a pool as he approaches it with distance cast fever! Stealth of approach on any size of Scottish salmon river is a useful skill to learn and will increase your success ratio if you tune in. Unfortunately a mirror is a seldom used salmon fishing instructional tool but then again few anglers even bother to undertake any formal training so naturally moaning about the general lack of salmon (even when they're only really pursuing one fish on any one fishing day) is more convenient to justify their lack of success.

How To Approach A Salmon Pool

Your approach to a salmon pool should always be a 'slow' movement 'wide' berthed one and never from the tail to the neck of the pool crunching your way up the gravel along the side of the riverbank. Stop at the neck of the pool if you're not familiar with the salmon lies and study the flows looking for the dark glassy patches or the edges of the stream where there's calmer deep water. Look for the surface swirls and boils created by subsurface features where salmon could be present. Once you're ready to fish move slowly into the water to ankle, shin or knee depth only (with no bow wave!) and start with a short gradually extending line before going deeper (only if required) and extending your fly line to full casting length before commencing your downstream fishing fly swing spacing movement.

Undisturbed Salmon Pools

There's nothing that beats being out on a salmon pool on any of the Scottish rivers when you've an internal 'hunch' that salmon are present whether they're showing or not. This is what salmon fly fishing is all about and that careful pool approach goes along way to increasing your chances of gaining the desired reaction from a fish that doesn't yet know you're there! I've watched hundreds of salmon anglers over the years put their chest waders on then within minutes they've 'charged' into a salmon pool right up to their oxters and wonder why they don't catch salmon on the fly. Common sense really but drop those often inaccurate thoughts that salmon are only present in the centre seam of the river as that will cost you many fish! Also, nothing is better than going onto an undisturbed salmon pool that you know hasn't been fished for a while even though that defies the logic what anglers have been trained to look for and book!