My friend John and I spent some time deliberating a few months ago about which river and beat to visit for our debut fishing trip, before finally settling on the Dochfour on the Ness. The beat has a very good stamp of fish, good streamy fly water and crucially when booking early very few unfishable days due to Lochs Ness and Dochfour acting as filters following a rise in levels.
As we all know, April and May were very dry this year and the levels were very low leading up to the trip. It did become apparent, though, in the days immediately prior that we would be getting heavy rain during our time on the beat. When we started fishing there was about 6 inches on the gauge and by the time we finished up after day two the river was up almost 2 feet.
On day one, Grant Sutherland, the ghillie, took John and I up to the top of the beat - where most of the recent catches had been made - to fish the Weir and the Burn Mouth. The Weir is a famous Ness pool at the weir, between the top of the river and Loch Dochfour, which is for the purpose of feeding water into the Caledonian Canal. It is also a significant low water obstacle for the fish and a very productive pool indeed. On my Dochfour debut in 2015, I got a 13lb licer from here in about 9 inches of water.
The Weir is relatively easily waded at low levels and you can reach 2/3 of the way to the right bank fairly easily.
The main flow into the Weir; fish are taken from around the glassy area to the left of the shot.
One from last time.
I started in Burn Mouth with my 14' 9wt Loop Cross S1, floating GDC shooting head, 10 foot slow sink polyleader and a small dressed Kylie on the business end. This is a favourite fly of mine which is popular on the River Teith where I have some regular fishing. Burn Mouth is a good catch for Dochfour and has good, even flow for the fly and the attraction of oxygenated water coming into the pool from the a burn leading from the adjacent canal. I fished through without a touch and went up to the Weir to see how John was getting on.
The answer was 'rather well'; he'd hooked into a fish near the top of the pool and it certainly wasn't behaving itself, running towards him and then away again, before repeating its routine. Grant made his way up with the net quickly and I followed with my camera. After about 5 minutes, the fish was played out and Grant coolly slipped the net under the fish, which turned out to be hooked on the outside of the mouth (and so well in front of the gill plate, for the record!). The fish had been caught on a triple density line fished from a John Norris Atlantic rod, which comes with John's high commendation. The fly was a home-tied Willie Gunn style snaelda variant.
John begins to play his first fish.
Grant arrives and the fish's odd behaviour is the main talking point.
9lbs with sea lice.
We then rotated back and forth between these two pools for the remainder of our first session, eventually stopping for food at the top hut, over-looking the Netting Water pool, in the mid-afternoon. These upper-most two pools were definitely the best bet, although I'm told fish from earlier in the season were more spread out among these pools and Netting Water and Andrews at the bottom the upper Dochfour beat. Netting Water is a wide dub which I'm told is fished from the boat mainly and Andrews starts with the water breaking off offset croys before gliding down to the bottom of the upper beat and breaking into the lower beat and 'The Major' (discussed briefly later).
After lunch, I had a quick ten or twelve casts (which is all that is really required) through the crease off the left bank croy at the neck of Andrews before rejoining Grant and John at the top of the beat. We continued our rotation between the pools for the late afternoon and evening, before the next fish was encountered.
The croy at Andrews provided a worthwhile few casts in amongst the main fishing which was done in the Weir and Burn Mouth pools.
I hooked the fish near the top of the Weir pool on a 10 foot fast polyleader and a 1 inch copper Cascade; the fish in the Weir pool seemed to be lying deep. The weir itself causes a significant amount of turbulence in the pool and the fish took as the fly eventually came onto the dangle after waiting an eternity for the line to come round. I fought it for 5 or so minutes, having shouted on John (who was fishing a corner dub right at the tail of the Weir pool) to come with the net. The fish didn't do anything spectacular (unlike my one from 2015 which went on a good few runs) but burrowed down into the pot of the pool, probably trying to knock the hook out on the bottom. Fairly co-operatively, the fish came up on its side not long after John arrived and it was netted with minimum fuss; a great relief after rather a lot of lost fish this season! The fish was a 12lb hen with a good 3 or 4 lice. As mentioned, Dochfour has a run of very high quality fish and this was in pristine condition, as was John's.
A similarly sized fish to the one I managed in 2015 and also sea liced.
We fished on until late evening before retiring for a dram at Glen Mhor Hotel in Inverness, where we were staying and which is a good base for an Inverness-area trip.
On day two, there was consistent heavy rain and the river rose at various rates all day. We were presented with the option to fish either the upper or lower beats and agreed to fish the lower beat in the morning in order to have a look around. John fished The Major, at the march with the upper beat, which is a fast but fairly shallow pool, racing into the lower beat. I fished Tail of the Island, which is a glide at the tail of The Major and which I'm told is a good lie. There was nothing doing though and so we both moved down to fish Black Trees, nearer the downstream end of Dochfour, which is a wide section requiring a deep wade and a long line. We both persisted with this for a while before deciding that the fish, which seemed to be running fairly hard, were more likely to be encountered at the Weir or Burn Mouth and so started the long walk up to the top beat in the pouring rain.
It was nice to have a cast in Black Trees, but it was apparent that our time was better spent at the top of the beat.
On arrival, the burn at the Burn Mouth was pouring in coloured water to the river, as one of the Ness tributaries - the Dochfour Burn - which now runs into the Caledonian Canal was up and flowing brown across the canal, into another small man-made burn and ultimately into the pool. On the walk up I remarked that the crease between the coloured water entering the river and the clear water of the Ness looked like a good spot in the heavy rain and, sure enough, as I finished my first run through the Weir (which takes a good 45 minutes), Russell - the seasonal ghillie who was standing in for Grant - arrived to inform that John had picked up a 10lber while short-lining. The fish had had numerous tugs at John's fly (the same one as deceived his first fish) before eventually taking after a few casts and was played while John was on the phone to his dad!
Looking downstream from the weir. The corner at the tail of the pool, to the left of the shot, is said be productive.
John's second - a hard fighter.
We continued to fish fairly hard all day - subject to a decent lunch break of an hour and a half or so when the rain was monsoon-esque - but there were no more takers and we called it a day at about 6pm to make our respective lengthy journeys back to Aberdeen and Edinburgh in dire conditions.
It was a pretty successful trip which re-affirmed my perception from my previous visit to the beat that it offers great value for money for fishing in nice surroundings with very good facilities and a consistently good prospect of fish of a very good stamp indeed.
