Salmon fishing on the River Creed in the Hebrides 

Just get on the Ferry Stephen! Visitors can get "associate" membership of the Stornoway Angling Association for about £100 per year, or £25 per day, and most of the trout fishing is free, the River Gress that I fish in a few other videos is about £10 per day. That is already at least a month of fishing so it doesn't need to be expensive. If you just fish for brown trout it doesn't need to cost anything at all!

John Maclean has been tying me up some excellent flies for the salmon, and trout, fishing and I think I will stick with them as it seems a lot less tricky than having to hunt down a stag before getting the first cast. I've never been to Langabhat as I really don't like boat fishing but a few people did really pretty well out there this season despite there being so few fish about.

The Creed is a fantastic river and produces more fish now than it did 40 years ago but like all rivers it has good and bad years and it didn't fish so well last season. I was up the Dam Pool today for a look and it is stuffed with fish including some fresh ones running through. We've just had the first rise in water in nearly two months as unlike the rest of the country Lewis has been bone dry this year but the river still isn't at a fishable level. Hopefully when the water comes we will get some great action.

Glad you enjoyed it Tom. I didn't represent the river very well with my failure to catch anything but it is actually a great fishing river and very productive. I did a few 2020 videos on the Creed where I actually caught something :-) My skills lie more in tea drinking than in catching fish!

That is a shame that you lost one but it happens to us all and is, I think, part of the sport. If we landed everything we hooked the fight wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun as you'd know the result before you even started to play the game. I didn't fish the Creed much this past season but even at that it didn't look like there were a lot of fish about but maybe that was just because of the relatively high water conditions for much of the season. As you say hopefully it will fish a bit better this coming year as we deserve a good year. In saying that it is relatively lightly fished compared to much association water and it still makes a great day out for not a lot of cash, I'd imagine many anglers in almost any other part of the country would kill to have a river like the Creed available to them.

@@caorach3354 that is very true. First season I've never seen a fish show in the bend pool...won't get home until October so fingers crossed for a healthy run and plenty water come the autumn time 😁

@@KevinMH6 I love the late season fishing, I know some people turn up their nose at fishing for coloured fish but I'd be pretty certain that those same people would break your arm to get a late season day if they were offered it on one of the big name waters. As you might have noticed I'm not a native of Lewis but I sort of half live there (girlfriend from Shawbost) these days but I try to be up in September and/or October if I can. Usually I mostly fish for trout until the season ends and then spend a week at the salmon if possible. Like you I saw nothing on the Creed last season, though I did see one big fresh salmon jump on Ois the day I was out there. I always fish above the road (except for a quick cast on Beat 1 on 1st April last year when Robbie was putting up the signs for the pool names) and there are always fish splashing about up there late in the season. I hope you get the fish, and the water, when you are up and I'll maybe see you up the river.

It is said to be the most windy inhabited place on earth so it can get very windy indeed, but if you get it then wind is good for the fishing. Lewis does hold the record for the most salmon to a single rod in a day, 54 I think, so the wind and water is good for something and it can be most exciting, and technical, fishing.

What a pure numpty you are. Why don't you carry your net on your back?

@@RH-sw1rq because I would imagine he doesn’t want to.

Thank you for watching, and for your very kind comments. On Lewis our rivers are quite small and so our salmon fishing can be quite "technical" for want of a better term so we tend not to fish heavy gear, but we often crawl about on hands and knees casting over fish we've seen move until they take. I fish an 11 foot 7 weight rod, some people like to go a bit shorter and some will fish a 6 weight but a 10 or 11 foot 7 weight would be fairly standard for most people. I use one of those Rio Versatip lines so I can change from a floater to various speeds of sink tip as although the rivers are relatively small there can be a good weight of water pushing down them when they are in flood. Salmon tend not to be leader shy so it is only sporting to use as heavy a leader as possible and I tend to go for something about 15lb breaking strain but we would normally fish two flies on a cast. I use basically the same setup for everything, including my trout fishing, and so this season I've had a 32 inch Spring salmon and also small brown trout on the same gear. Spring salmon fishing with what is, basically, trout gear is a whole lot of fun. The following video shows the same setup, with a sink tip attached, in action with a small back end grilse: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EZkdt-TKBoc.html

Thank you for the comment Mats, I would be confident that you have made the right decision as I would expect the Hebrides are not for you.