In the very early days of Wholehope, I explored the Cheviot Hills together with my brother George, Charlie McGonnigal and many other pals. As a result of these wanderings, we became good friends with many of the shepherds living in isolated farmhouses such as Rookland, Milkhope, and Uswayford, and we began to hear tales of mysterious ‘midnight fishing trips’.
As you can imagine, our interest was aroused and one of the shepherds (name omitted to protect the guilty!) promised to take us out some night when the conditions were right. We saw this person many times during convivial nights in the Rose and Thistle, but the special conditions that were apparently necessary for this kind of fishing never quite came together. Arriving at the pub one Friday evening during heavy rain, and with the mist right down to the ground, we were therefore a bit surprised when our man pronounced that ‘tonight is perfect’ for our proposed escapade.
After a few preparatory pints, we took the field path over to the Alwin Burn, then up the valley to the Rookland burn (called Rookland Sike on the OS map). In normal conditions, this burn is about three feet wide and nine inches deep, but this particular night it was a raging torrent, with water filling the banks up to the top and foam spilling over the bank sides. Using powerful torches, we followed the burn steeply uphill, lighting up the pools and looking under the boulders, but not a fish did we see until the last pool just below the house. Studying the water, our local fishing expert said ‘there’s a good one, see its tail’ - all we amateurs could see was the water, foaming and roiling over the rocks, but our man had already tied a small gaff onto his walking stick, and, while we held him by one hand and the back of his soaking wet tweed jacket, he leaned out precariously over the pool. In seconds, a six-pound salmon sailed over our heads and up onto the bank side and, with a mad scramble, we dived onto the fish before it flopped back into the water and carried it in triumph up to the house. The good wife was still up and we sat in front of the peat fire with our host while she cooked and served the trophy for our supper; the King of Fish never tasted better.
Later, we took our sleeping bags out to the hay barn, reflecting on a really exciting escapade and finally convinced that the tiny Cheviot burns hold really big fish, you just have to know where to look.
Map images on this page are courtesy of the Ordnance Survey Get-a-Map scheme
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