Shooting and fishing: ‘It was the biggest fish he has ever caught and he caught it on a fly of his own design’

Any minute now we shall be subjected to men in beards and kilts playing the bagpipes in a blizzard and throwing whisky into the Tay to mark the opening of the salmon season on the river. (Don’t you love the way we are constantly told there is more to Scotland than whisky and bagpipes?)

In fact the Strathy, Helmsdale and Naver open on Thursday and the Ness opens the same day as the Tay, which was Perth tackle maker PD Malloch’s home river. Which brings us to the Savill’s Malloch Trophy presented each year for the largest fish caught on a fly in Scotland and returned to the river. The Malloch Trophy disappeared after the Malloch shop in Perth was sold and Tennent’s the lager people took on the sponsorship, but ran out of replica trophies with the result that winners ended up with carry outs instead of gongs.

It was revived four years ago after the original trophy was rediscovered in a cupboard and is now sponsored by top people’s estate agents Savills, but organised by Robert Rattray of rival estate agents CKD Galbraith.

Anyway this year’s trophy has been won by Sam Valentine, a joiner from Clayton-le-Woods in Lancashire who caught his 34-pounder, and released it (shame – but rules is rules), on the Dalswinton beat of the Nith in Dumfries and Galloway. It was the biggest fish he has ever caught and he caught it on a fly of his own design and making – the SV1 which sounds more like an aircraft prototype than a fly, but perhaps in time it will become the Sam Valentine.

Its main constituent is arctic fox fur and it was really designed not for the Nith at all but the Awe in Argyllshire. You may believe it, or not, but since Mr Valentine and his pals started using the SV1 their salmon catches have gratifyingly improved. What I find interesting about all this is that Mr Valentine speaks with an impenetrable Lancashire accent and is about as far removed as is possible from the stereotype of the salmon fisherman who pays £2000 for a week’s fishing and drinks gin and tonic for breakfast.

When he’s not hauling them out with an SV1, Mr Valentine likes to go pike fishing on Loch Awe. In this he is an admirable successor to the 2009 winner, Sandy Walker from Fort William, who caught a 32lb fish on the local association water of the Lochy where his ticket costs £90 a year.

To further confound the tweedy image of salmon fishermen Mr Walker fishes, in summer, in shorts with a red polka dot bandana on his head like some Caledonian Berlusconi.

See Sam’s fly on www.flyfishing-and-flytying.co.uk