Skye and the Inner Hebrides

The sea loch is the single feature that makes fishing in the Inner Hebrides different from anywhere else in Britain, and its properties are worth setting out because they are counter-intuitive.

IT IS A DROWNED GLACIAL VALLEY. Ice carved deep U-shaped troughs, sea level rose, and the result is genuinely deep salt water reaching many kilometres inland, sheltered from the Atlantic by the land on either side. Depths that would require a substantial offshore trip elsewhere are available a few hundred metres from a road.

THE SILL AT THE MOUTH IS THE CRITICAL DETAIL. Many sea lochs are shallower at the entrance than inside, because the glacier deposited material there or because the trough was cut deeper inland. That sill restricts exchange with the open sea, so the deep water inside is renewed only intermittently. In some lochs that produces a stratified, poorly flushed deep layer with low oxygen — the same mechanism the Baltic record describes, at a much smaller scale.

FRESH WATER ENTERS AT THE HEAD AND SETS UP A GRADIENT. Rivers and burns discharge into the inner loch, producing a brackish surface layer that thins toward the mouth. That gradient concentrates sea trout in the upper loch, brings salmon through on their way to the rivers, and gives the whole system an estuarine character along its inner length while remaining fully marine at the mouth.

WHICH MAKES THE LOCH A NURSERY AND A CORRIDOR AS WELL AS A FISHERY. Migratory salmonids pass through it twice, smolts on the way out and adults on the way back, and both are concentrated in a narrow body of water while doing so.

THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCE IS SHELTER, and it is why small-boat and kayak fishing are viable here in a way they are not on the exposed coast. The record's kayak material applies directly: the shelter is genuine, and it ends at the mouth.

AND THE SAME SHELTERED DEEP WATER IS WHY THE SALMON FARMS ARE THERE, which is the beginning of the region's most contested subject and the reason it is treated separately.

The most significant thing to have happened to fishing in this region within living memory is the collapse of the sea trout fishery, and it is treated here as a genuine controversy because that is what it is.

THE DECLINE IS NOT IN DISPUTE. West Highland and Hebridean sea trout catches fell sharply from the late twentieth century, and in a number of systems the fishery effectively ceased. Rivers and sea lochs that supported substantial sea trout fishing produce a fraction of what they did, and the change was rapid rather than gradual.

THE PROPOSED MECHANISM IS SEA LICE FROM SALMON AQUACULTURE. Salmon farms are sited in sheltered sea lochs — the same sheltered deep water the previous section describes — and farmed salmon carry sea lice, a naturally occurring parasite whose abundance can be greatly elevated around concentrations of host fish. Wild sea trout smolts pass through those same lochs on their way to sea, and sea trout, unlike salmon, remain in coastal waters rather than migrating offshore, so their exposure is prolonged. Heavy lice burdens on small smolts cause damage and mortality, and premature return of lice-infested sea trout to fresh water has been repeatedly documented.

THE EVIDENCE IS SUBSTANTIAL AND THE CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION IS CONTESTED. There is a considerable scientific literature associating farm proximity with lice burdens on wild salmonids and with reduced marine survival, and there is also genuine argument about the magnitude of the effect relative to other pressures — marine climate change, prey availability, predation and freshwater habitat condition among them. Industry and conservation positions differ, and the question has been examined by parliamentary and government inquiries more than once.

FISHINGHQ RECORDS IT AS UNRESOLVED RATHER THAN SETTLING IT. The association is well evidenced; the share of the decline attributable to it is not agreed. Saying either that aquaculture caused the collapse or that it did not would be a stronger claim than the evidence supports.

WHAT IS NOT CONTESTED is that sea trout in this region are in a poor state, that many fisheries operate mandatory catch and release, and that the species' coastal life history makes it unusually exposed to whatever happens in a sea loch. What restrictions apply on any water is a matter for the competent authority.

The Inner Hebrides' fishing culture has been reshaped more recently and more thoroughly than that of the outer islands.

THE SEA LOCHS WERE THE FISHERY AND THEN THEY WERE THE FARM. Sheltered deep inlets that once supported a herring and white fish fishery now hold a substantial salmon aquaculture industry, and that industry is a major local employer and a major local controversy in roughly equal measure. Any honest account of fishing culture here has to say so.

TOURISM IS THE OTHER TRANSFORMATION. Skye in particular receives very large visitor numbers, and the pressure that puts on access, parking and small communities is a live local issue that a visiting angler is part of whether they intend to be or not.

SEA ANGLING IS INFORMAL AND UNDERUSED. Small-boat and shore fishing in the sheltered sounds and sea lochs is genuinely good and comparatively lightly practised, and the local relationship to it is casual rather than organised.

THE TROUT AND SEA TROUT FISHING has an old estate structure behind it, and the west coast sea trout decline of recent decades has been the subject of sustained and sometimes bitter argument about its causes.

CREELING IS THE WORKING FISHERY. Prawns, lobster and crab from small boats out of many small harbours is what the local commercial fleet does, and langoustine in particular is the west coast's most valuable inshore species.

AND THE GAELIC CULTURAL LAYER IS PRESENT BUT THINNER than in the Outer Hebrides, with the language less widely spoken and the place names carrying more of it than the conversation does.

The Inner Hebrides' defining physical property is shelter, and the disciplines follow directly.

SMALL-BOAT FISHING IN SEA LOCHS AND SOUNDS is the characteristic practice. Deep water inside sheltered inlets, reachable in conditions that would stop an exposed coast, supports fishing for pollack, cod, ling, coalfish and ray from small craft — and the sheltered water is exactly what the Outer Hebrides' Atlantic coast does not offer.

KAYAK AND SMALL-CRAFT FISHING IS UNUSUALLY VIABLE for the same reason, with sheltered water, short crossings and interesting ground within reach of a paddle.

SHORE FISHING WORKS ROCK, PIER AND SEA LOCH MARGIN, with deep water frequently close in and kelp holding pollack and wrasse.

FLY FISHING FOR TROUT works hill lochs and the more fertile lowland waters, largely from bank and small boat, in a fishery with an estate and association structure.

SEA TROUT FISHING IN THE SEA LOCHS is a specialised local discipline, working the shallow margins and river mouths for fish feeding in salt water — and it is the discipline most affected by the west coast sea trout decline.

DIVING AND SPEARFISHING are practicable in the sheltered clear water of the sounds, and the west coast's scallop and shellfish grounds have a diving fishery attached.

AND CREELING IS THE COMMERCIAL DISCIPLINE, for langoustine, lobster and crab, worked at small scale from a large number of harbours.

The species picture here is the west coast Scottish one, with the sea lochs adding a distinct component.

POLLACK ARE THE CHARACTERISTIC INSHORE PREDATOR, holding over kelp and rock in the sounds and sea lochs, taken on lures and baits from boat and shore, and abundant enough to be the default fish of a day out.

COD, LING AND COALFISH occupy the harder and deeper ground, with ling in particular associated with the deep rocky bottoms of the sea lochs.

MACKEREL ARRIVE INSHORE IN THE WARMER MONTHS and are the forage base and the bait supply for everything else.

THORNBACK RAY, SPURDOG AND DOGFISH work the cleaner and muddier ground within the lochs, which have soft bottoms at depth quite unlike the open coast.

SEA TROUT AND SALMON USE THE SYSTEMS, and the decline of west coast sea trout within recent decades is the region's central fisheries question. The causes have been argued over at length, with sea lice from aquaculture, marine survival and freshwater habitat all advanced; the argument is genuine and unresolved and this record does not settle it.

WILD BROWN TROUT OCCUPY THE HILL AND LOWLAND LOCHS, generally on acid peat water with the smaller fish that implies, and better where the geology is more fertile.

AND THE INVERTEBRATE FISHERY IS THE ECONOMIC ONE. Langoustine burrowing in the soft mud of the sea loch floors is the most valuable inshore species on this coast, and scallops, lobster and brown crab complete the picture. A description of Inner Hebridean fishing that stopped at finfish would miss the part that pays.

The vocabulary here describes a coastline of narrows and inlets, and the terms are precise about a distinction English blurs.

SEA LOCH NAMES A MARINE INLET, frequently glacially cut, deep, with a shallow sill at its mouth. That sill matters: it restricts exchange with the open sea, so the deep water inside can be still, cold and poorly mixed, which produces a benthic community — and a langoustine fishery — quite unlike the open coast.

KYLE, FROM THE GAELIC CAOL, NAMES A NARROW STRAIT between islands or between island and mainland. Tidal flow concentrates through a kyle, which makes it both a fishing feature and a passage to be timed.

SOUND NAMES A LARGER CHANNEL between land masses, and the sounds of this archipelago are the sheltered highways the fishery works.

SKERRY, FROM THE NORSE, NAMES AN ISOLATED ROCK that may cover with the tide. As in Orkney, skerries are marks and hazards at once.

CUDDY AND SAITHE AGAIN NAME COALFISH by life stage, and the persistence of the distinction across the whole of the Scottish islands says something about how universally that fish was eaten.

PRAWN IN SCOTTISH COMMERCIAL USAGE MEANS LANGOUSTINE — the Norway lobster — rather than a shrimp, and a visitor reading a harbour landing board will misunderstand it otherwise. This is one of the clearer cases in the catalogue of a common word meaning something different regionally.

AND THE SILL IS THE PIECE OF PHYSICAL VOCABULARY WORTH CARRYING, because once a reader knows that a sea loch has one, the loch's chemistry, its species and its fishery all become predictable.

The framework here is the Scottish one, with the sea loch aquaculture industry adding a layer that other parts of Britain do not have.

NO ROD LICENCE APPLIES to sea angling or to brown trout fishing in Scotland; the right to fish fresh water attaches to the fishery, so permission comes from the owner, estate or angling association.

SALMON AND SEA TROUT ARE SEPARATELY REGULATED, with statutory seasons and a national conservation framework that assesses salmon stocks river by river and can restrict killing. On a coast where sea trout have declined, that framework is under continuous scrutiny.

SEA FISHING IS SUBJECT TO NATIONAL AND EUROPEAN MEASURES on sizes, prohibited species and gear, and to inshore fisheries arrangements with a regional dimension.

AQUACULTURE IS REGULATED SEPARATELY AGAIN, through planning, environmental and fish health regimes rather than through fisheries law, and the interaction between fish farms and wild salmonids is governed through that route rather than through angling rules. This is the single most consequential regulatory question on this coast and it is not a fisheries one.

SHELLFISH CARRY SIZE LIMITS, GEAR RULES AND LICENSING for commercial take, and filter feeders carry a separate public health regime of ground classification and biotoxin monitoring.

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS COVER SIGNIFICANT SEA LOCH AND SOUND HABITAT, several of them designated for seabed features such as flame shell and maerl beds that are damaged by mobile gear, and their management has been contested between static and mobile fishing interests.

AND FISHINGHQ DOES NOT STATE WHAT ANY OF THIS CURRENTLY PERMITS.

The seasonal pattern here is west coast Scottish, with shelter changing what a bad forecast means.

THE SEA WARMS LATE AND COOLS LATE. Deep Atlantic water surrounding the islands lags the air by months, so the best inshore sea fishing comes in late summer and autumn rather than early summer, and winter fishing remains possible in sheltered water when the open coast is unusable.

SPRING IS THE TROUT SEASON'S OPENING and the lochs fish well early because they warm quickly relative to the sea.

SUMMER BRINGS MACKEREL INSHORE and with them the predators that follow, and the long northern days extend the fishing day considerably.

AUTUMN IS THE BEST GENERAL PERIOD for sea fishing, with warm water, feeding fish and enough weather to move things without shutting the coast down.

WINTER IS WORKABLE IN THE LOCHS AND SOUNDS in a way it is not on the exposed Atlantic side, which is the practical benefit of shelter and the reason this archipelago's fishing year is longer than the Outer Hebrides'.

WIND DIRECTION IS THE DAILY VARIABLE AND IT IS MORE USEFUL THAN WIND STRENGTH. With islands, sounds and lochs oriented in every direction, there is nearly always somewhere fishable, and local knowledge is largely knowledge of which water works in which wind.

AND THE SEA TROUT SEASON IN THE LOCHS runs through the summer, with fish feeding in salt water in the shallow margins, on a pattern that has become less reliable than it was and is watched closely for that reason.