Fish & Fly - Jon Beer - 04/99 - Lochisle Challenge

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THE LOCHISLE CHALLENGE

Our April 1999 contribution from Jon Beer

On the face of it, my friend Philip does not have the look of a sporting world record about him - although he may dispute this. He is the same age as me, something he disputes as well - fair dos: I try and dispute it myself sometimes. Philip is not a professional sportsman. He used to make his living marketing ladies lipstick: now he designs and makes frocks. No-one, you might think, is going to be checking this bloke's urine sample for excess testosterone. And yet Philip holds a sporting world record. And it is not one of your Bang!-dash-eyeballs-out-for-ten-seconds-and-then-relax jobs. It is one of your altogether more manly endurance numbers. What Philip holds is the World Team 5-day Lochisle record.

A Lochisle is an island that has trout on it. It is the fisherman's equivalent of the hill-walker's "Munro", those Scottish hills over three thousand feet. There are 280 Munros. Strapping fellows with calf muscles of knotted sinew stride up these things carrying those silly sticks with a forked end that serve no obvious purpose when walking. When they get to the top they have "bagged" the Munro and then they walk down again. They can bag them over a lifetime or blitz as many as they can in a weekend or whatever.

To bag a Lochisle the fisherman has to catch a trout on an island off the British coast. There are 51 Lochisles we know of but several more will be added to the official list as hardy, explorer types with the obligatory double-barrelled explorer surnames discover trout in the lochs and lochans of the remoter islands. Lochisles can be bagged gradually over a lifetime - little more than an excuse to visit the more beautiful and magical bits of the British isles - or they can be a real challenge.

I know all about Philip's attempt to establish the World Team 5-day Lochisle Record: I was the other half of the team. We had pictured it as a romp through the islands of the Hebrides, stopping beside some trouty little loch and filling our boots with trout fishing before moving on to the next island, the next loch. And perhaps it can be like that. One day. Not quite yet.

When you eat bacon, egg, and beans on fried bread do you save the bacon, the best bit, to last or do you eat it first? Some do one: some do the other. It is an important decision in Lochisling. The small islands were always going to be the most difficult: difficult to get to, difficult to get information and less likely to hold trout. Big islands have big, interconnected loch systems: there will always be somewhere for the trout to spawn and they can spread through the system. Small islands have one or two isolated lochs. One may have trout: one may not. And no-one knows which or whether. We thought the small islands would take longer. So we planned to start with a small island and when we had bagged that we would pick up the big, easy ones in the spare time before the next scheduled ferry to the next group of islands. A good, sensible scheme but it has a flaw. What if the small island does not have a trout? How long do you allow to be sure of this? And when do you give up? How long do you leave to catch a fish on the big island before the next ferry? These are interesting questions because if you miss the next ferry you may be stuck for the next few hours, the next day, the next week. Weaving a path through the ferry time-tables is a minor field-sport in its own right.

It will be different the next time. Next time we will not rely on Bruce Sandison's "Rivers and Lochs of Scotland" to tell us which lochs contain trout and which don't. This is a prodigious tome describing the fish and fishing on every loch named on the Ordnance Survey maps of Scotland. It is a jolly book with an optimistic outlook -perhaps a little too optimistic. It had us plugging away, hour after frustrating hour, on lochs that local knowledge knew had no fish. We found this out later. There are other guides, some reliable and others less so, but they rarely cover the smaller, out-of-the-way islands that are the Lochislers gems. It will be different next time. Next time we will have first-hand faith that this loch on this island has trout. And we will get it from you.

Here's how. There is now a website for Lochislers. This site lists the known lochisles, gives details of ferries and permissions and guidebooks and all that stuff. It also gives details of the waters where trout are to be found. It also lists the islands where trout might be found. Anyone can use all this, anyone can add their two-pennies worth - or the priceless information that a particular island, a particular loch has a trout. You will find all this at www.lochisle.co.uk

Philip's world record bagged nine lochisles in five days. We went to the Western Isles, working up the chain of islands from South Uist-Benbecula-North Uist and islands in between, fcrossing to Lewis and Harris and the bits around there before crossing to Skye and Raasay. You can read a full account of this journey, an epic tale of derring-do packed with trout and cassoulet, in the March and April issues of Trout and Salmon magazine. It will appear in the lochisle website in due course. With better information that will be beaten. I'm going to have a shy at it myself this summer in the northern isles of Shetland.

Or you could do it.

If you have your own information to add please drop us a line.

Jon Beer contributes regularly to publications including Trout & Salmon and The Telegraph. If you have any comments, do not hesitate to g et in touch or use the message board.