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FAR FLUNG AND UNSUNG WATERS

Our July 1999 contribution from Jon Beer

End of June. High pollen-count. Red, streaming eyes and a throat like a six inches up a badger's bottom. All in all the natural and traditional time for exams. Rooms full of snuffling, sneezing folk answering questions like

"Compare and contrast the trout fishing on the River Najerilla and the River Clyde."

Bit of luck, this question coming up, really: I have just come back from fishing the River Najerilla and the week before I was on the Clyde. So I know this one.

The contrasting bit is easy. The Rio Najerilla flows through a tight and twisting limestone gorge in La Rioja, a region of northern Spain justly famous for its production of superb full-bodied red wines. The Clyde isn't. Famous for red wines, that is. The Clyde is famous for ship-building only not now and not where I was fishing.

The comparisons are, curiously, striking. They are of a similar size at the spots I was fishing. There were stretches on both where you could comfortably ford the river or wade up the centre casting to either side. And there were deep holes on both where you could quickly and comfortably drown. Speeds and character were surprisingly similar. A road runs alongside the length of both stretches: a twisting mountain road sharing the gorge and heading into the next valley on the Rio Najerilla and the M74 on the stretch of the River Clyde between Abington and Crawford. The point is that both are easy to get to.

And they are both accessible to the everyday fisherman. That stretch of the Clyde belongs to the United Clyde Angling Protective Association. They have about 40 miles of the river and anyone can buy a day ticket for £5 or fish all year for £20.

The system is a little different in Spain: I will explain it briefly in case you want to fish on your Spanish hols. There are no private rivers in Spain. The rivers belong to the people. Of course the trouble with the people is that they all want to fish the best bits which would rapidly become the worst bits so this is what happens. The best bits are designated as cotos (reserves) and are strictly controlled - only a few days a week and only a set number of anglers, usually on beats. Access to these cotos is by lottery. In November each year you apply for the bits you want to fish on this or that cotos on such and such a week of the following season. If it is a popular stretch at a good time of the year there will be far more hopeful anglers than allowed rods. The lucky ones are drawn from the hat and informed. Outside these cotos the fishing is unrestricted and free and can be quite as good as the reserved bits but may be more over-fished or hard to get to. But so can the Clyde. There is no limit to tickets and at the start of the season anglers can be tripping over each other. So - in one way or another - the punter can always get onto either the Clyde or the Najerilla which is splendid news and is as it should be.

There's more. Both rivers can be - and are - fished every which way. Gadgers - the nymphs of the large stonefly - are used as bait, and a very effective bait too, on both rivers, both quite legally and used in much the same way with a long rod to swim the bait down the runs and riffles. Both are spun. And both are fished with the fly for each is an excellent fly water with a fearsome local reputation and well-known in its own country as good trout fishing.

Now for the fish. Both have trout, of course. I mention this because a fair number of British anglers tend to lift the left eyebrow when you talk of trout in Spain. They think it too hot. Well, a lot of Spain is hot - but a lot of it is also high and the waters fresh and fast and cool and there are trout in almost every part of the country. But not grayling (there are a few stunted specimens in the foothills of the Pyrenees but they don't count). The grayling of the Clyde count, all right, and there is also the chance of sea trout and salmon. Spain has those in the water of Gallicia but not in the Najerilla whose waters flow, eventually, to the Med.

And so we come, finally, to the fishing. Two of us fished the Clyde, not hard, for a few hours one afternoon. We had four fish and lost a lot more than I care to admit. The four we caught and measured averaged a fraction under one pound each. The smallest measured 13 inches, the largest 15 inches.

Twenty-four of us fished the reserved cotos on the Najerilla. Those are the good bits. We fished them hard for two days. I doubt if our total catch weight matched what we had caught on the Clyde. I saw no big fish in the river. I do not doubt there are big fish there. Certainly the size and quantity of stonefly nymphs would feed a prodigious army and, of course, that might have been our problem: trying to catch them on silly little flies when they had gorged on gadgers. All I am stating is simply what happened where. It all happened on the Clyde.

It is huge fun to fish far flung waters. You learn an awful lot fishing in other lands with other fishermen. And one of the things you learn is just how good some of our home-grown, unsung trout fishing is.

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 get in touch or use the message board.