Salmon Fishing Scotland Tales from the Salmon King.

Salmon Fishing Scotland Tales from the Salmon King.

Tales from the salmon king.
A FISHING career which covered more than 50 years on the Cargill beat of the Tay has been written up by one of the river’s most charismatic personalities, writes angling correspondent Ken Bell.
But while Colin Leslie’s book, Scotland’s Salmon King, centres on his life- long pursuit of all things piscatorial, from trout he guddled in the Isla to his record 56 lb salmon, as well as a huge black marlin, it also tells of a long-gone style of country life which centred around the farm, and farming activities.
So deeply set was Mr Leslie’s family in their farming life, that the morning after he returned home on being demobbed from the navy at the end of the war, he was wakened at 5am by his father with the words, “There’s tatties to be picked!”
Mr Leslie has spent his 80-plus years in Perthshire, living for many years near Alyth before his father took over the tenancy of Scones of Lethandy. He now lives in Guildtown. But it was while living at Ruthven on the banks of the Isla he took up fishing, starting with eels caught on worms at Craigie Linn, then moving on as time progressed to trout and salmon.
He took his first salmon at Waulkmill Ferry—an 18 lb fish taken on worm on light trout tackle—when he was only 10. A pupil of Perth Academy, he frequently took the rabbits he had shot into Perth on his way to school, exchanging them for money to buy fishing tackle.
But it wasn’t all shooting and fishing for the young Leslies. Father was a potato grower who had the tenancy of seven farms at one time—and from a young age Colin and the rest of the family were kept busy especially at tattie time. On one occasion he helped the shepherd drive 200 sheep from Lethandy into Perth, across Perth Bridge and up High Street, to the mart in Caledonian Road.
Mr Leslie enjoyed his war years as a gunner on a motor torpedo boat, feeling that his experience with a 20mm Oerlikon cannon improved his shooting! His vessel was sunk—by the RAF—in May 1944 as his flotilla searched for survivors from a German E-boat.
Mr Leslie deals only briefly with this “friendly fire” incident, saying he received 13 wounds from the strafing, and was given 14 days survivor’s leave, cut short after two days as his new boat was needed for the D-Day invasion.
But fishing was very much his life, and while he could gloss over the sinking of the MTB, he can go into full details of the many large salmon he has taken, where he caught it and on what.
Reading of days when a catch of 400 fish a year on Cargill was “a very poor year” and the norm was anything from 600-800 salmon shows how the river has changed.
His biggest salmon weighed an incredible 56 lb 8 oz—and was such an ugly fish it was eventually fed to the hens “after which they laid lovely, red-yolked eggs,” he recalled.
In addition, Mr Leslie has landed eight fish over 40 lb and numerous more over 30 lb. His biggest fish ever, however, was not from the Tay, but was a black marlin weighing 600 lb taken off East Australia.
Scotland’s Salmon King is published by Melrose Books.