The A to Z of Where to Fish For Wild Brown Trout in Scotland

To go to the section you require just click the river, loch or reservoir link below to find a great collection of places to fish throughout Scotland.

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Rivers | Lochs | Reservoirs

In Scotland our many lochs offer fishing, scenery and history all in one, there are places like Loch Leven with its the island castle which was prison to Mary Queen of Scots or Lochindorb Castle, island lair to the infamous Wolf of Badenoch that give you a real skin tingle. Then there is Loch Ness where you might just find yourself attached to something more than you bargained for in its monstrous deeps. The lochs vary in size and most importantly in ph. Lowland lochs are generally alkaline to neutral while the highland loch tend to be acidic which has a bearing on the size of fish you will find, with the acidic waters producing smaller fish.

Off course not all Highland lochs are acidic. In the far north around Caithness and Durness you will find places where geological events have brought massive folds of limestone to the earths surface producing alkaline lochs of great water quality for trout growth. Here you will find big, fit, fight fish in magnificent condition. The big lochs, Rannoch, Tay, Earn, Lomond have great reputations for offering high quality sport.

Then there is awesome Loch Awe with its British Record trout of over 31lbs 12ozs (39 inches long, girth 25.5 inches and the tail measured 11 inches caught on the 15th of March 2002), whew! Not a stockie hand raised to this size but a real fish that lived all of its life in the loch eating and growing and you no something - its still there because its captor, Brian Rutland put it back. The previous record fish caught by Ken Oliver of 30lbs 8ozs had stood for less than 2 years. These fish do not come to the fly but trawling a char as bait in the deeps of the north of the loch can have great rewards for the patient angler who would like his name in the record books even if past history indicates that it won't be there very long for there are probably even bigger fish to be had 

Where ever you go in Scotland you will find great wild fishing (except in Aberdeenshire where lochs are in short supply for reasons only mother Nature can answer, maybe having provided the Dee, Don and Deveron she found she had been over generous).

I hope you find plenty to explore in the Fishing Finder where to fish directory, places where you will experience and enjoy the fishing as much as I have over the years whether catching 3 fish to a cast or hunting all day for one quality fish. The nature of our Scottish lochs is such that you can find cluster of lochs barely a few hundred yards apart (or in the case of Scourie hundreds of loch) where one loch will give you 4 to the pound and the next one will give one pound average. That is the attraction of wild loch fishing.

While this section of the Directory is focused on where to fish for wild brown trout many of our lochs are stocked with rainbow trout (or with escapees which become naturalised in the larger lochs), they may have entered the loch as stockies but after a year or two or more these rainbows are feral!