Fishing and shooting: Setting out with something delicious in mind

To the River Inver, which obligingly debauches into Loch Inver at Lochinver. We had been asked ostensibly to stay at the Inver Lodge Hotel, which has undergone a culinary renaissance at the hands of Albert Roux, one half of the Roux brothers and owner of le Gavroche.

The hotel restaurant is now Chez Roux and Albert gave us a rousing speech on how disgraceful it was that all the fish landed at Lochinver went into freezer lorries heading for Paris and Madrid. He, Albert, was going to head them off at the pass and make sure the best stuff ended up at Chez Roux.

During lunch, which included quenelle of pike, a Roux speciality, I remarked that I might go fishing in the afternoon. Albert said: "I will arrange it, and if you catch a fish, I shall cook it. Is a deal?" Naturellement, chef. Whereupon all hell let loose behind the scenes, because no one goes fishing much in Lochinver at the beginning of April as, I now know, the fish don't really start to run until late May.

The ghillie, Robert Stewart, sawing up logs somewhere on the estate, was hauled back to escort me to the river when all I really wanted was to flick a fly round the edges of a loch for half an hour in search of a semi-comatose brown trout. "There might be a kelt in the river," said Robert brightly. Actually, I thought unkindly, I want a stonking great, fresh-run 18 pounder for Albert to poach, not a shagged out kelt. But by now the hospitality was in overdrive. And anyway, I've never fished the Inver.

Over the years the Vestey family of beef barons who own the river and hotel have installed all sorts of piers and weirs, cruives and platforms to improve the fishing about a mile upstream from the mouth. It turns out that last year the Inver had one of its best sea trout years ever. But then they don't have salmon cages in the bay, which invariably finish off sea trout populations. So that's encouraging.

We started off in the oddly named Cow pool with a huge, to me, yellowish, hairy tube fly designed, apparently, by Ally Gown as in "Ally's Shrimp". We fished conversationally downstream with Robert describing his work on the hatchery to arrive at The Star, named after a pony which had worked on the estate. It was a big pool created by a bridged weir with a very senior fishing lunch hut above it; the sort that can seat at least 20 on a good summer day when the company is better than the fishing.

At which point I caught a kelt which steamed about erratically until too bored to carry on it let itself to be netted and unhooked by Robert. He cradled it gently into the flow of the stream to give it time to recover. And it was away.

"Albert. I caught a fish but put it back." I reported. "I know. Now I can't cook it. Terrible."

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• This article was first published in The Scotsman Magazine, April 24, 2010