Sam Carlisle - From First Fish to Global Conflict: What's Really Changed in 30 Years of Salmon Conservation??

Voices of the Countryside

Finding a copy of Trout & Salmon from 1994 shows that we’re still talking about the same environmental, and geopolitical, issues three decades on.

A wormy start

“Look what I’ve found Papa!” I held up an oozing earthworm, my hands blackened by Hebridrean peat. The year was 1994, I was five years old, and we were on a family holiday to the Isle of Lewis. My enthusiasm for a day spent trout fishing was waning. We’d seen and caught nothing and I couldn’t really get this casting lark. My father took the worm from me, squished it onto the hook of our Teal, Blue & Silver fly, glanced around to make sure his friend and host hadn’t seen him, and said, “try this.”

I lobbed it into the black waters of the burn. The next moment a trout was writhing on the other end, and with all the awkwardness of a child who’d never done this before, I lifted the poor thing onto the bank. It probably weighed a quarter of a pound. Thirty years on I can still recall my uncontainable excitement. My first fish, and the moment that ignited a lifelong interest in angling.