Loch Awe
Loch · Fresh water · in Scotland
The longest freshwater loch in Scotland: a forty-kilometre glacial trough in Argyll, steep-sided and forested, with rocky shores, deep water close in, drowned timber and a hydroelectric scheme at its northern end.
Safety: cold water shock — can cause serious injury or death. 2 more points apply here.
FishingHQ describes what this place is. It does not say whether you may fish it: access rights, permits, licences, byelaws, closures and protected areas all apply, all differ and all change. Who to ask is below.
What you can catch here
Documented at this place, grouped by how you would be fishing, with how strongly the sources support each one. This is what has been written down, not a forecast, and being listed is never permission to fish.
From the shore · 3
From a boat · 4
Fly fishing · 2
What these strengths mean
- Characteristic of this coast
- This ground is strongly identified with this species by the sources that cover it.
- Established quarry
- Fishing sources describe this as a normal local target here, not merely as caught.
- Recorded here
- At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
- Occasional
- Caught here, and described as unusual rather than normal. Do not plan a session around it.
- Places, accounts and sources are counted separately
- A fish documented once at each of six marks is still documented once at each of six marks. Breadth is reported as a place count and never raises the strength, and sources are deduplicated across places so one publisher covering a whole coast counts as one. A fishery account is a source describing the fishing; a recorded catch is a report of a specific catch. They are counted apart because they are not the same evidence.
How people fish it
Practised here: Coarse fishing, Fly fishing.
Methods the sources name for this ground. Each one is explained in full on its own page.
- Deadbaiting
Presenting a dead fish as bait for predators — a method that works because scavenging is normal predator behaviour, not an exception.
- Trolling
Towing lures or baits behind a moving boat to cover large volumes of water and locate scattered fish.
- Stillwater fly fishing
Fly fishing without current, where the angler supplies every movement and the problem becomes finding fish rather than presenting to them.
The ground and the water
- The ground
- The longest freshwater loch in Scotland: a forty-kilometre glacial trough in Argyll, steep-sided and forested, with rocky shores, deep water close in, drowned timber and a hydroelectric scheme at its northern end.
- Exposure
- The loch runs along its own valley, which funnels wind down its length and produces a substantial fetch and a short steep wave.
- Depth
- Deep — over ninety metres in places — and cold at depth, with steeply shelving margins that put substantial water within a short distance of the bank.
- Tide and flow
- None. Levels are influenced by the hydro scheme as well as by rainfall, and the outflow through the Pass of Brander is controlled.
Through the year
A pike fishery of international reputation, a wild brown trout fishery through the season, and a charr population in the deep cold water.
Safety
Cold water shock — Can cause serious injury or death
UK coastal and inland water is cold enough for most of the year to trigger the involuntary gasp and the loss of swimming ability that decides most immersion deaths, and it does so within the first minute, long before hypothermia is relevant.
What reduces it: Wear a buoyancy aid rather than carry one, carry a means of calling for help on the person rather than in a bag, and plan on the assumption that an unplanned entry into the water is survivable only if somebody knows immediately.
Boat safety — Can cause serious injury or death
A long, deep, cold loch in a wind-funnelling glen with steep forested shores that offer few landing places. Wind rises down the loch faster than a small boat can return, and the water is cold enough year-round to disable a swimmer within minutes.
What reduces it: Wear a buoyancy aid at all times afloat, stay within a return margin of a landable shore, watch up-loch for wind, and treat the loch's remoteness as part of the risk rather than as separate from it.
Fishing alone — Can cause injury needing treatment
Much of the shoreline is remote and forested, and mobile coverage is patchy or absent along substantial stretches.
What reduces it: Tell somebody the specific access point and expected return, and carry a means of calling for help that does not depend on a mobile signal where the signal is unreliable.
Rules and access
Licence
Scotland has no general rod licence for freshwater fishing. That is the opposite of the position in England and Wales, and it is not a relaxation.
Permission to fish
The whole question. Fishing rights on almost every river and loch belong to a proprietor, estate, angling association or district salmon fishery board, and permission must come from them.
FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. Scotland has no general rod licence, and the fishing rights on almost every river and loch belong to somebody: a proprietor, an estate, an angling association or a district salmon fishery board. Permission is a separate question from access, and both change. Check with the relevant fishery board or association before going.
Who holds the answer:
- The district salmon fishery board for the catchment, where the water holds migratory fish.
- The proprietor, estate or angling association that holds the fishing rights.
- The Scottish Government, for freshwater fisheries policy and protection orders.
- The Scottish Government marine directorate, for sea fisheries, aquaculture and national freshwater fisheries policy.
- The district salmon fishery board or equivalent body for the river concerned, which administers salmon and sea trout locally and sets conservation measures river by river.
- The owner or occupier of the fishing rights, or the club, association or estate acting for them, whose permission is required for any freshwater fishing.
- The national access authority and the local authority, for the statutory right of responsible access and the code governing it.
- The national nature agency, for protected species, marine protected areas and designated sites.
- The relevant fishery trust or river board, for local catchment measures and protection orders where these apply.
Nearby fishing
Other publicly documented places within about 40 km, by distance. Positions are approximate public geography and are never exact marks.
- Loch Etive — 10–25 km · Sea loch
- Oban Bay and the Sound of Kerrera — 10–25 km · Sound or strait
- Loch Craignish and the Dorus Mor — 25–40 km · Tidal race
- Loch Fyne — 25–40 km · Sea loch
- Loch Linnhe — 25–40 km · Sea loch
- The Gulf of Corryvreckan — 25–40 km · Tidal race
- Loch Long — 25–40 km · Sea loch
Sources for this place
- Freshwater Fishes of the British Isles — HarperCollins (New Naturalist 75), 1992 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution, habitat requirements and biology of the freshwater fishes of Britain and Ireland named here.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Angling Times — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Long-running published description of British coarse and match angling practice by water and by named reach.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated public descriptions of which waters are conventionally fished and how, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship, and not relied on for access, permission or any current rule.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy. Last reviewed 2026-08-16.