Paradise on the Shin How do pools get named? Some are obvious like Junction or Streamy Run. Some hark back to a time probably before you were born. Jack’s Pool or Stewarts Clan Pool. Many refer to features that have long since gone, Hut Pool or Cable Car. Then there’s the downright ridiculous, Paradise. I have a theory, if you’re going to name something and name it big, like Paradise, then it best live up to it’s name. I trained in theatre and straight out of drama school I remember a group of actors setting up a company called ‘The Midas Touch.’ I always thought that was a tad bold. As far as I know ‘The Midas Touch’ haven’t picked up an Olivier yet, but if salmon pools gave out awards, ‘Paradise’ on the River Shin
by Tom Bell
in Sutherland, Scotland would need an acceptance speech at the ready. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the award for most unique, intimate and challenging Salmon pool in Scotland, complete with bench, goes to…Paradise’ Notice I didn’t say most beautiful or classic. Don’t get me wrong Paradise is no Shrek but there are more beautiful pools in Scotland. What Paradise has over them though lies in the name. The strange, secret, matriarchal, dependable way of delivering the feeling that you are actually in….Paradise. I first came across Paradise in 2013 fishing for 3 days in September with a friend, Stuart Ray. I’d taken my
Sage Z Axis 12’6” 5 weight along and Stuart had taken 2 fish to 11lb in 30 minutes out of ‘Angus’ on it. I had caught nothing for the whole 3 days despite seeing fish over 25lb no more than a rod lengths away from me. I had resigned myself to a fish less trip. Stuart had packed up and came to watch my dying efforts in Paradise at the end of the third day. I was using my beloved Sage TCX 7119-4, a Beulah Elixir and some homemade 15 foot mow tips. Stuart had got his fish on a Ross Macdonald Calvin Shrimp so I had one on too.
“Come on, come on.” I cast my last line and let the fly swing right on the lip of Paradise. They like them tweaked here so I was twitching the cone head onto the last 2 feet of the swing before I wound in for the trip. I hunkered down and muttered ‘Come on, come on………I’m in!’ I was literally 3 seconds away from reeling in and calling it a day when the best fish of my life took the fly, a 4lb coloured grilse! It gave me a great little fight on the 7 weight and I safely beached it. You’ve all seen Rocky right? When he shouts “Adriane!” Well I shouted something similar which I can’t print but let’s just say it was an expression of joy and pain all rolled into one borne from 3 days of hard fish less fishing on this amazing river.
Why was it my best fish ever? Well that’s not about the fish or the pool or even fishing. It’s about human beings. It’s about adversity and the joy of overcoming it in the presence of another person who then becomes a friend. We were people that fished together before that fish, now we are friends. I get the impression Paradise has gently and quietly altered the course of human relationships many times before. Isn’t that what all the best pools do? I don’t know, I’m just asking the question. I know some pools are very generous in the amounts of fish they produce but do they reach beyond the physical and into the spiritual? One more little question before I leave existentialism alone and talk hardcore fishing, isn’t that what Paradise is? To be transported from the physical into the spiritual?
The River Shin The River Shin is, with the Oykel, Carron and Cassley, one of the Kyle of Sutherland’s 4 famous rivers. It’s a small river that holds good numbers of large salmon. They are strangely large in fact for such a small river. Only 7 miles long and dammed by a hydro plant, the Shin has a constant flow of dark peat stained water running over rock at an alarming rate. The Falls of Shin are a temperature barrier until June and it was below the falls that our 3 day Salmon Course for 4 rods in May took the fishing all the way to the tide. Before June, the fishing on the Shin can be split into 2 distinct characters. Below the Falls down to the Hut is rocky, fast tumbling necks opening out to dark, foam flecked, eery black pools like Ted Hughes said in ‘Pike’ “as deep as England.” Don’t bother getting down to these fish, they’ll come to you. Watching the ex Balmoral Ghillie of 20 years, Robbie Elliot dissect these inky black pots is a lesson in fishing. You know how a chef dices an onion swiftly and equally? Well thats what Shin Ghillie and Sunray Adventures Guide Robbie does in his wellies, peering from rock strata to the surface of Angus, Macpherson, Turn, Cromarty et al. You can be stroking the perfect Sunray all the way to your feet, creating that perfectly rhythmic wake when a 20lb Springer can launch itself mouth wide open at you. It’s frightening sometimes. You know gangsters of the flats? Well this is the salmon equivalent. It can produce the most colourful language from a Saint. It’s arresting fishing. It engages the emotions. It grabs the life in you and often spits it out.
Light Lines From the Falls to the Hut is best tackled with switches or single handers. For our 4 clients over the 3 days we geared them up with Sage One 7116-4’s, TCX 6119-4’s, some XP’s and Sage One 6 weight single handers. The Rio Short Head Skagits, Gripshooters and Beulah Elixirs were the right length and made casting easy. Here’s the rub. Some pools are 20 foot wide so you need lines as short as possible with as much retrieve length as you can twitch. There’s another Shin fact, keep the fly moving is the mantra from Robbie Elliot who is obsessive about the choice of line. No good are these shooting heads with loops at the rear. You are retrieving to the bank, sometimes with you stood somewhere in the woods to make sure you cover every inch of fish holding water. Hey, the fish have to lie somewhere and just because it’s the opposite side of the pool doesn’t mean that they lie there. Oh no, fishing from the Falls to the Hut is right bank but the lies are all over the pools, most of them under your toes so get that fly retrieved to your bank.
Casting This raises an interesting point. How to cast such a short line with a spey rod, often many feet above the water? Welcome back the long forgotten art of the double handed overhead cast. Work the neck, keep well away from the water and dissect the water until you have enough line out to make rolls, then tiptoe to the edge of the pool and carefully lengthen some speys out off your left until you are covering the middle. Stuart Ray & Robbie Elliot with a 16lb sea liced Springer taken on a Sage TCX 7119-4 in Paradise.
There’s an old saying on the Shin, “If you can’t see the fish take the fly, you are casting too far.”
Bread. Not bread! On holiday in Portugal last year I took a rod and hammered the harbour for 2lb mullet. You had to lie on your front with your eyes just peeking over the stone buttress, feed bread to the shoals and present your bread fly. If I dropped the fly beautifully like a size 22 midge and waited, the mullet would take a look, say ‘Bread?’ investigate and then leisurely say ‘Not bread.’ If I fed the swim up and got them feeding hard, then smacked a whack of a fly down on their heads, 4 of them would shout ‘BREAD!!!, I’d hook one and the other 3 would scream off shouting ‘NOTTTT BREEEADDDD!!!’ to all the others. Well you can do that with your overheads in the necks of pools on the Shin. I call it the Bread, not Bread method. Fishing the Falls down is typical kitten and ball of wool territory. Get your game on, here kitty kitty. Stuart took a 16lb sea liced Springer on a 6119-4 TCX out of Paradise playing this game. From the physical, to the spiritual.
Home to the Sea Below the Hut the river opens out, not into the Spey but yes, more swinging water. Keep commuting down past the road bridge and you get into double bank fishing. Here we meet the outlet pool of the Hydro plant. Ugly it should be yet ugly it aint. This junction of pulsating freshwater and incoming Kyle of Sutherland creates a really unique turbulent clash of the incoming and the outgoing. Instead of meeting latitudinally and
creating a murderous cauldron of froth, they negotiate with each other and graze each others currents longitudinally creating one of the best salmon pools Ive seen man make in my life. If it was on a flat beach, sea bass would cruise up and down it all tide long. Here you can get your swing on and bring out the 13,14 footers. Some clever Scot has even carved out some lovely left bank ‘showing off casting’ promontories which bring out the very best in your single speys. This is no game fair though so don’t think you’re there to cast for audiences. This deep powerful beat holds the big Shin fish minutes off the tide. Hook up and you’re fighting angry Atlantic Salmon, a hydro plant and an escaping tide. In 2014, as a direct result of landing that 4lb coloured grilse with my friend Stuart, Sunray Adventures was formed. A destination company taking clients to the Shin and likeminded rivers. In May 2014 we took a party of 4 to our first Shin residential salmon course. Over the 3 days Kim Waters from Steyn Waters lost a fish and landed a 12lb Springer. Stuart Ray had 2 fish, 9lb and 16lb both on a TCX 6119-4 and Argentina regular David Roby lost fish and raised fish to this new method of surface tactics. American diplomat Charlie, new to salmon fishing, turned fish to sunrays using his new best friend, the Sage One 7116-4.
The Estate Cottage sleeps 13 in newly renovated accommodation. Our in house chef was in grave danger of upstaging the river with a magnificent menu of Languistine, venison, home made soups and exquisite deserts. The devil was in the detail every time we sat down, tired and hungry to another 3 course meal. It is purely coincidence that my Mother is in fact a cook for Sporting Lodges and that I praise the chef so highly. Kim Waters of Steyn Waters fame agreed with me and immediately booked Mum to cook in Iceland for his guests there. So my Mum has actually, gone to Iceland!
Before I had to leave early for Belfast, I placed a black shrimp on the opposite side of Paradise, under Robbie’s instruction, only to have the rod heaved over and straighten, leaving an ominous black inky boil bulging the meniscus. All the most exciting things in life have a degree of darkness to them I think and Paradise is no exception.
Sunray Adventures specialises in unique, modern Salmon fishing experiences. Call Tom Bell on 0800 689 0591 for more information.
Tom Bell Tom Bell has been fly fishing for 36 years in rivers, saltwater and stillwaters in the UK & abroad. In the seventies, he grew up in The Udny Arms fishing hotel in Newburgh, Aberdeen. It was on the River Ythan that he spun with flies for sea trout in the saltwater estuary. Tom got his first fly
rod at aged 6 and has been casting ever since. Tom is an advanced AAPGAI Instructor in the UK and owner of Sunray Adventures which hosts trips to Scotland, Norway and Iceland.