Nice water finally offered some welcome sport on the Helmsdale especially on Monday & Tuesday. 5 fish were reported on the Association water 4 of which were fresh. It was early bird Adam Macdonald who struck the first blow with 2 fresh fish from the tail of the Flat pool on an Allys tube but the rest of the day surprisingly only produced 3 more. The beats fared better with 3 off beat 1 and 7 off beat 2 Monday but there were no major happenings although fishing was fairly steady for the rest of the week. The count was probably 50/50 fresh to stale fish and no great fresh run materialised but some better quality salmon were caught in the 6 - 8lbs category.

More rain is forecast and a proper big spate would be grand to keep things in fine fettle, there are surely some more fresh fish to come and there are still 7 weeks to go yet! Day and weekly tickets are available on the Association water from the tackle shop for only £25 per rod per day. There is rod and wader hire also.

We have received some very good Testimonials this week (below) from anglers returning from fishing trips abroad. Our Alistairs are really making their mark in Russia and Norway now. Success came quickly a few years ago with the Cascade Alistair copper tube in Norway soon after we invented it and the following has been growing all over the Northern hemisphere, I feel a few new colour combinations coming on!

Hi Ron,
I wanted to let you know that I have had some remarkable success with the Alistair Conehead in Russia....... it was totally deadly. We had an absolute bonanza on the Pana due to the very late spring and I managed to take 86 fish in a week on the Alistair Conehead...... on one actual fly..... it was threadbare by the end! I then went to Yokanaga not long afterwards and got it to 92 not out including grassing 3 over 20lbs to 28lb ...... but I somehow lost the fly at Lyliok when releasing a fish which was gutting! From a flies perspective not a bad place to be lost in action! I can’t imagine you expected one tube to take 92 Salmon when you tied it!
PV
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron, just a quick message of thanks. I was on Rynda at the start of July this year. Whist everyone was keen to get on the surface flies I felt the water was still a little high and cool at the beginning of the week. I turned to the trusty cascade alistair cone head that you had tied me up for a previous trip.( water was so low last time they didn't get used.)
I had a top week and over the first 3 days the alistair accounted for nearly 20 fish to 20lb.. It was lethal, every pool and pocket the fish nailed it!!!
I ended up with 36 for the week and 26 on the same fly!!
Many thanks!!!!
I Robertson

The Cascade Alistair

The gorgeous Cascade Alistair JC - call us if you want any of these flies tied up by Ron personally.

Classic Alistair Conehead

Adam Macdonald in his double hotspot - Tail of the Flat pool on the Association water.

As the Freshwater Fishery Review comes to its final conclusions with a report due for ministers in September it would be intetesting to hear your views on the subject. Have a go on our Helmsdale river Forum, simply create a username and password and sign in to have your say! Read the the latest Review update on the Forum.

Its the Highland Games next week and we will have the best of gear in action for the fly casting competitions as usual, this year the salmon anglers will have the luxury of casting with the new CLA Gamefair winning line from GaelForce. Designed by James Chalmers (who worked with Carron Jetstream) these new lines are super slick and cast out of site and we are now stockists. Made in America, they display all the best design qualities of Carron Lines with added durability and phenominal long distance turnover. This line on a Loop Cross 15ft S1 should be a pretty amazing unit to cast, I hope you get along to enjoy! all the other casting comps will be on with troutdistance and accuraccy. This year 2 attempts only per discipline are permitted so get sharpened up.