Fishing and shooting: His fish is now swimming about with a radio transmitter in its dorsal fin

I suppose if anyone should be able to catch a fish it is a “senior fisheries biologist,” in this case Alan Kettle-White, of the Argyll Fisheries Trust, who has landed a 30lb 10oz wild brownie on Loch Awe.

This, it turns out, is probably the third largest brownie ever caught in Britain. The heaviest at 31lb (think 14 bags of sugar) and the second heaviest were also caught on Loch Awe and no doubt the loch will at some point produce the fourth heaviest. There are two possible explanations as to why Loch Awe produces big trout. The first is that it is a very big loch and lots of nice things for fish to eat live in it, and secondly that wherever big fish are known to lurk everyone will want to catch one; so the fishing effort is considerable and as the loch is only a couple of hours from the Central Belt, you can be on the water by 9am.

I have never tried to catch these big “ferox” brown trout which, if they get to about 12 inches long, will switch from eating grubs and wriggly things to gobbling up Arctic char. They will even eat other trout if they get in the way which explains why they were traditionally referred to as cannibals.

Anyway, once they make the switch to a high protein fish they put on weight like nobody’s business and live for years – 23 in the case of one caught on Loch Rannoch.

So these things are huge, even though catching them sounds a bit like trawling for mackerel from a boat – chuck it out and see what bites which, for those of us with a low boredom threshold, isn’t very enticing. But ferox fishermen are notoriously a breed apart and rather secretive about their baits and weights and where they are going to fish.

In the case of the record fish, Alan was fishing for both business and pleasure, 30ft down with a weighted line and lure and using heavy tackle so that anything he caught could be reeled in smartly, tagged, and returned.

His fish is now swimming about with a radio transmitter in its dorsal fin because they are trying to work out where these big Loch Awe trout spawn. There is some idea they nip down through the hydro barrage at the head of the Awe and spawn in the river. If this turns out to be the case some deal will need to be reached with the hydro operators to keep the sluices open at propitious moments so the fish can have free passage, but that is already on the cards for salmon.

One heartening thing about ferox is that they don’t seem to mind being caught several times. Indeed evidence from Rannoch suggests they absolutely thrive in spite of the experience. Which is nice.