Caithness was Calling!

Caithness was calling  The Dabbler, The Tangler, The Tiddler and The Rookie set off on our much anticipated  trip to the far north of Scotland  on  Friday 7th July at 4 am.
On route we stopped at Kintradwell just outside Brora so that I could visit Megan Boyd's ruined house.
My companions didnt understand my fascination and enthusiasm of the Megan Boyd Story and her ruined house.. I'll speak more of that in a separate blog post.
We arrived at the Brown Trout Hotel in Watten mid morning and settled into our self-carering digs!
The digs were rather drab, rundown and basic. I wouldnt take my wife there but they were perfect us four fishermen!
The weather was scorching so we just hung around the digs until about 5pm and made the short drive to the boat moorings at Loch Watten's east end.
Loch Watten was a huge disappointment as it was green with algae and looked like pea soup.
We had a couple of drifts, went ashore for a blether then decided to make one last short drift and called the game a bogey!
On Saturday morning  we met Hugo Ross at his shop and managed to readjust our plans for the weekend. Hugo was very helpful and accommodating and arranged for us to have a boat on Tofftingal on Saturday night and Sunday during the day.
We managed 17 trout between the four of us on a very sunny and hot  Saturday night
No huge trout but braw fiesty fighters!
On Sunday we had better fishing weather: cloudy grey skies with a gentle breeze so we fished through the day!
It was fantastic and surprising to see good hatches of mayfly on the loch on both days!
The loch had a fair bit of weed up the middle, however we managed good long drifts either side of it and managed a good number of trout once again between the four of us!
The Osprey we watched on both days did quite well too!
Succesfull flies were Watten Warriors, olive bumbles and Loch Ordies.
We called it a day around 5pm as we had arranged to meet Hugo at his shop and hand back the keys for the boats and engines in the evening. Whilst in Wick we had a take - away and headed back to the digs where we relaxed and had a few drinks
On Monday morning we were up early and as ever Scott was on breakfast duty making sure we were well fed before we packed the cars and headed over to Loch Calder for a planned few hours. The two Tams and Scott caught a few trout on the spinners whilst I had a couple of small trout and numerous rises to my flies,  however Thunder and lightening halted play prematurely and that was the last of the fishing on our sojourn to Caithness.

We then started the long journey south down the A9 stopping off at Kintradwell for another look again at Megan's House. Once again my companions werent interested in that.. Next stop was Tain for a bite to eat which everyone was keen on. Then the long tiring journey home to Lanarkshire.

Although Loch Watten was dissapointing we had a great time fishing at Tofftingal and Calder and the camaraderie was fantastic back at the digs at night too.

Looking forward to another trip together sometime in the future already.