An American Ghillie in Scotland

“Enough already. I’m done flogging this God-forsaken river.” These were the first words Malcom had spoken in more than two hours. At last he speaks I thought, grateful for the end of a particularly cold and tedious day of fishing on the River Deveron.

“Cooock-taaaaail hooo-uuuur,” his friend John serenated from a wind-induced fetal position on the riverbank above.

“Looking forward to drowning our sorrows,” Malcolm said as he reeled in the last few feet of his fly line. He stepped clumsily from the river, walked toward John and flopped down next to him. Staring at the river with contempt Malcolm grumbled, “Shit, not one bleedin’ fish in five days.”

I splashed my way out of the river and stood beside the two beaten men waiting for them to rise for the walk back to the lodge. John, looking revived by the idea of an impending warming scotch, looked up at me and made an unexpected offer. “Before we head in for the night, how about a few casts from our American ghillie? Maybe you can show us how it’s done.”

I’d been in Scotland for more than five weeks and had seriously regretted my decision to come. The idea seemed so ideal just a few months before; a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend the Fall working on a salmon river under the tutelage of a master Scottish ghillie. What a great way to extend my post-college graduation summer a few more months. Plus, my only alternative was to start looking for a real job. Thoughts of record-low catch totals, rude clients, and excruciating boredom never entered my mind. In fact, I hadn’t given the trip too much thought at all before my arrival at the airport in Aberdeen.

It all seemed pretty straight-forward the way my Dad had described it to me. A young couple he had met on a fishing trip was looking for an extra pair of hands to help around their newly acquired fishing lodge. Vacuuming, lawn mowing, and garbage hauling in exchange for the opportunity be the assistant ghillie at Montcoffer Salmon Lodge on the River Deveron. In addition to free room and board, I could expect tips from clients and maybe even a little after hours fishing from time to time. So, I jumped at the chance and packed my bags for what was certain to be a unique adventure, if nothing else.

“I’ll take a few casts for fun,” I answered John, probably a bit too enthusiastically. Up until this point in my trip I had yet to have the opportunity to fish and had come to realize that people who pay handsomely for a week of salmon fishing aren’t inclined to hand the rod over to their guide to do it for them. But, John and Malcolm were pretty amiable guys and seemed to appreciate my help and my willingness to engage in their sophomoric banter. Plus, they had experienced such lousy fishing up to this point that offering me a few minutes on the water was hardly an act of great sacrifice or kindness; just a way to shake things up at the end of another long, fishless day.

I ran to the ghillie shed a few hundred feet down the bank where my rod had been set up, but untouched, since the day I arrived. Nick Anderson, the beat’s head ghillie and my new boss, had the place decorated with a few torn-out pages from Trout and Salmon magazine and a faded old poster of an attractive woman fishing in nothing but a pair of hip boots. The small hut stored nets, a rusty gaffe, an old pair of waders and Nick’s long spey rods. The hut was also where Nick kept his whisky stash that he broke into on particularly cold, windy and boring days; which had been every day so far.

I grabbed my fly rod from the rack and hurried back to John and Malcom. As I took my position at the heart of the pool and began stripping out the first few feet of fly line John, still crouched on the bank above, reminded me of his and Malcolm’s presence. “Where’s the rest of your rod, mate?”.

“That’s it,” I replied with near genuine cheerfulness.

Fishing a single-handed, nine-foot rod like mine was not the custom on Scottish salmon rivers. The standard was a two-handed, 14-foot spey rod that required much less work to cast than my, “wee trout rod”, as Nick called it. I ignored John’s dig and went to work, knowing I had only a short window before they would be wanting to return to the lodge for that drink.

With limited time, I figured I would start right at the spot where Nick and I had been seeing a large, dark salmon rolling and splashing on and off over the past few days. Due to his size and frequent showings in the same spot, Nick decided to name the fish.

“Henry. That’s what we’ll call that buggar,” Nick said in his thick Scottish accent. “I had a dog named Henry once and he was as big and dark as that one there.” Nick had also described Henry as “lock jawed.”

“Why do you say that Nick?,” I asked, our mentor/mentee relationship having been well established by this point.

He took a hard drag on his cigarette before answering, “Fish who hang around the same spot as long as he has usually aren’t in an eating mood. Also, he must be pretty smart to grow as big and old as he is.”

Malcolm and John were familiar with Henry too. He had shown himself to them periodically with lazy, long rolls that created an unmistakable and tantalizing wake in the flat river. They did what anyone would do and fished for Henry over and over, each time ending with an obscenity directed toward the fish before they moved on. But, I had noticed something from watching Malcolm and John fish for Henry. They had been casting their fly to the exact spot where they had seen him rise out of the water. I thought if there was a chance at all to hook Henry it would be by playing a little hard to get instead of putting it right in front of him. A flimsy theory derived from long hours of nothing else to do.

I settled my feet a few feet off the bank, the river barely rising above my knees. My first cast was a short one just to get some line out. My next was longer, but still well shy of Henry. It was hard not to go for the Hail Mary pass with so little time on the clock, but I resisted the temptation and kept to my normal routine of adding a few feet of line with each cast. My next cast was aimed just short of Henry, followed by deliberate, long stripping. Then a longer cast, landing the fly near the far bank and past Henry. I let the fly settle for a beat, then this time a quicker strip-strip-strip-strip-str-…suddenly the line in my hand tightened and tugged back at me. A few shakes of the head followed by a steady pull and a deep bend in my rod.

“You’ve got to be shiiiiiiiiiiittin’ me”, groaned Malcolm, not making any attempt to hide his contempt for my good fortune. John joined in, “Go figure. Five days without so much as a nibble and he hooks one in five minutes.”

“Sorry guys,” I said insincerely while keeping my eyes trained on the spot where my fly line met the river. The fish ran again and the sound of my reel going to work punctured the air — zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Music to my ears.

The fish was getting pretty far down river now. After a brief pause, he reeled off a second, even more determined run. I was now left with only the backing section of my line in the reel. “I can’t let him take much more line or he’s going to spool me,” I thought. Just short of a section of faster rapids, he jumped high out of the water and landed with a loud, heart-stopping splash. Even through darkening skies, it was clear to the three of us that the large silhouette of the airborne fish was Henry. From seeing him fully out of the water and also feeling how effortlessly he took the line down the river, I guessed he was at least 20-pounds. There hadn’t been a fish caught on the Deveron more than 10-pounds the whole season.

“Man, I’ve got him on. I hooked Henry.” I said to myself. “Now, don’t screw this up. Nick will never forgive you”.

Nick looked just how I imagined a Scottish ghillie would look with his traditional Balmoral cap, smart vest and well-worn hip boots. He also sounded the part with his heavy Scottish accent, so thick it took me weeks to fully decipher. But, Nick had a hard edge to him and failed to hide his considerable resentment toward the wealthy clients who paid dearly to spend a week at the Montcoffer Salmon Lodge. I learned early on that Nick did not actually enjoy being a ghillie.

His dream was to run his own fishing lodge and he carried a visible grudge toward his younger, English employers, an odd, giddy couple from London named Giles and Karrie. They knew nothing about fishing, but held an idealized vision of running a bucolic salmon lodge and escaping the hectic pace of the city. Their romantic image had come crashing down into a hard reality by now. Partly because running a lodge was more work than they ever imagined. Partly because the fishing on the River Deveron that year was a generally a bust. And partly because their stubborn and bitter head ghillie challenged their authority at every turn.

Nick and I had gotten off to a rough start too. In fact, the man who was supposed to be my mentor that season barely spoke a word to me for the first two weeks. To Nick, I was on the side of management and he made it clear that he didn’t understand why anyone would come all the way from America to do a job he despised. While Nick clearly resisted me in those early days, he did see some self-serving value in having an able-bodied assistant and routinely passed the most unpleasant tasks my way.

He assigned me to the senile and odd-smelling octogenarian doctor who needed constant hands-on supervision so he wouldn’t fall in the river. When novice anglers came, he directed me to unhook flies caught in clothing or in the trees lining the river bank. When the river flooded and piles of hay, garbage and the odd rotting sheep carcass collected on the river bank, he handed me a pitchfork to clear out the mess. When a rowdy and drunken group of Frenchmen came and decided that shooting pigeons was more entertaining than not catching fish, he told me to row out and collect the dead birds off of the river. Nick watched with a smile as he sat on his bench smoking and throwing sticks for his three dogs.

“Malcolm, please grab the net. This is the big one,” I said, focused on the job at hand and not deterred by the fact that he was actually a client and paying for me to net his fish. Surprisingly, Malcolm jumped right in and stood next to me with my net dangling at his side. Even John showed some interest now and rose to his feet to get a better view of the action.

Henry didn’t disappoint. In fact, he put on a great show for the three of us. Twenty minutes or so of steady runs, powerful rolls, angry splashes and graceful jumps. Malcolm and John were now fully engaged in the theatre playing out on the river and seemed to be genuinely enjoying the moment. While they hadn’t hooked the fish themselves, they were now part of the growing drama. I began to wonder if could get Henry to the net without the fly popping free from his mouth.

“All right Malcolm, this is it, he’s ready. Please keep the net low and watch the leader.” Malcolm seemed a bit unsteady to me and I felt it necessary to give him some stern direction.

“O.k. Peter, I’m doing my best, but, where is he??”

Henry was nearly at our feet but it was getting hard to see in the fading light. Henry saw us, though, and as Malcolm made a desperate, blind lunge with the net, the big salmon darted away and the fight was back on. After a few final, nerve-racking shakes of the head, however, Henry lost his will and I was able to steer him toward us. Malcolm slid the net beneath Henry and he lifted the fish high into the air triumphantly. Now in the net, Henry gave one last flap which startled Malcolm and sent him sprawling backward onto the bank. It wasn’t pretty, but Henry was safely on dry land. I let out a yelp and offered unrequited high-fives to John, who had never left our side. I reached into the net and grabbed Henry by his thick tail. A big, beautiful salmon was now in my hands. At that moment, my prior five weeks of boredom, loneliness and regret had vanished and turned to elation.

Now it was time to see the job through to the end. Though I would have much preferred to return Henry back to the waters of the Deveron, releasing fish on any Scottish river was strictly forbidden at that time. Once caught, Henry was destined for the smokehouse, regardless of my feelings on the topic. While I hadn’t had much practice with this particular part of the job, I grabbed a nearby rock and a few firm knocks to the top of Henry’s head did the trick.

I laid the now dead fish on the grass and paused to take in his great size and beauty. I felt euphoric. I also felt instant regret for killing him, especially after he had just given me so much joy. But, I was reassured in knowing that Nick would have it done no other way. Thinking of Nick, I couldn’t wait to share the story with him. Only he would truly appreciate both the magnitude and irony of the event.

Despite a shaky start, Nick and I had grown close. His attitude toward me almost immediately changed when I arrived at the river one morning and shared my honest opinion of our collective boss, Giles. “That guy’s a major asshole,” I said, finally fed up with his unending sarcasm and demeaning attitude.

“He’s a fucking prat,” Nick piled on. I didn’t know exactly what that word meant at the time, but I got the gist and Nick and I shared our first laugh together. From there, a genuine bond grew between us. Through my love of fishing, my fascination with the river, and my interest in his world of guiding, I helped him appreciate that his job, while occasionally tedious and full of “prats,” wasn’t all bad. Once we had built a trust, Nick opened up completely to me. I learned he had been an illegal poacher on the open ocean before becoming a licensed ghillie on a private river. He also told me of long, drunken nights tracking and shooting seals that had swam into the river and wrecked the fishing. He taught me to spey cast with his big rod — something he did so effortlessly that he could smoke a cigarette with his free hand at the same time. He routinely invited me to dinner at his home and I got to know his wife and son. I saw the softer side of Nick and came to better understand his misgivings about being a ghillie.

“Malcolm, I need a photo of this. Do you mind if I make a quick run back to the lodge to get my camera?” My disposable Kodak was sitting unused in a drawer back in my room.

“Run man!” answered Malcolm. “We’ll look after the beast”.

I took off and ran as fast as my rubber waders would allow. On my way up the road to the lodge, I saw the headlights of Nick’s car approaching from the other direction. As we met, Nick rolled down his window and asked, “Where you runnin’ to lad?”

Out of breath, I said, “Nick, we caught Henry. I’m going to get my camera, I’ll be right back.” Nick just smiled, ground his car into gear and drove on to the river.

A few minutes later I was back to the river and I could see from the lights of his car that Nick was beaming. He grabbed my arm and said, “We caught Henry, huh? You caught Henry!! Why didn’t you say so?”

“I figured it’d be best if I let our clients fill you in Nick.”

Then began the dusky photo session. Shots of Henry alone. A few of me holding Henry. A group shot of Malcolm, John, Henry and me. And finally, one of just Nick, Henry and me; both of us grinning ear-to-ear. A now faded photo that serves as a vivid reminder of a wild day on the River Deveron and a once in a lifetime friendship with its head ghillie.