Fiona Guest recalls a memorable day's salmon fishing on the Fife Eden
The River Eden season starts on the 15th February and runs until the 31st of October. Although a narrow river in parts it offers up approximately 16 miles of double bank fishing. It is run by Eden Angling Association. Permits are very competitive at £50 for the season, £25 for OAP and a meer £10 for the under 18s. Day tickets are also available at £10. The river itself starts at the estuary at Guardbridge in Fife which is an amazing stretch for the sea trout with reports of fish of up to 8lb being caught. Then on to another great hole known as the Tattie Hole great again for the sea trout and salmon. The next deep holes create a horse shoe part of the river known as The Pooch that is very deep and very slow and tends to hold the fish in low water and becomes a favourite spot then for our worm fishers! Heading upstream there is a nice straight which is deep with a big shelf running under the water, definitely want to try and get your lure running along that, deeper the better. Then it’s on to Jock Shaws, another good hole and named after one of our members who sadly passed away. The water from there all the way up to Dairse Bridge is superb. With water, you want to look at heading towards what we call the meetings, this is where the Ceres Burn meets the Eden and then up into and above Cupar. This then leads me to tell you my story of a great day and my biggest catch!
It was the 10th of October 2014 the river had risen nicely with some much needed rain. My husband Graham and I packed up the car and off we headed to Dairsie Bridge car park. Looking down at the water it was pretty coloured, but hey, we were not going to let that put us off. So we decided we needed to be further upstream. We jumped back in the car and headed to New Mills. The water looked really good, was still coloured but not like at the bridge. We set up the rods with Rappalas, that is our choice of lure for The Eden. We had a cast in some of the good spots all the while heading further upstream towards the beet factory. We finally arrived at where we wanted to be, had a few casts about then I decided to have another look in the lure box, I needed something more colourful! The one that really stood out for me was a yellow flying C, something I prefer not to fish with, but it was one of those moments, it was shouting out at me. So flying C tied on I cast downstream. Nothing. Then on my third cast bang!! I thought I had hit a snag until it fought back then I knew we were in business. Having only caught one salmon previous to this and that was on the Tay this was a totally different experience. Trying to keep it from running out of the pool and into snags was a challenge. Graham, the excellent teacher he is was keeping me right all the time telling me to keep my rod up and to try and keep it away from the snaggy edge. Finally after a five minute fight the fish came to the net.
The net itself is another story. The day before our normal salmon Gye net had broken, so we had to use an extendable sea trout net, not the best, but hey we did not expect to catch.
So the salmon came to the net Graham was at the ready and with a quick lunge the fish was safely in the net. Nothing then prepared me for when I actually lifted it out how big it was. I carefully lifted it to get my photo but it started kicking so looks like im actually hugging her. I can now call her, her as it was a lovely hen fish of about 15lb.
My biggest fish to date and my proudest moment as it was on my local river and won me the cup that year, for being the biggest fish caught and the first woman to receive the cup. She was safely returned and swam away which is always a lovely sight to see.