The bedrock of a Scottish boy’s life consists of rugby, golf and fishing. It is impossible to grow up in Scotland without becoming involved in these activities; at least it was for me in my youth.

I still hear to this day our semi-deranged school sports master yelling at me, “Lie on the ball, Sandison, lie on the ball!” Thus I learned my proper function as fullback: to kill the ball in dangerous moments adjacent to the goal line whilst twenty-nine blood-crazed delinquents gathered round and kicked the living hell out on me.

I determined that there were more pleasurable ways of spending a morning and soon took up golf. My father gave me four wooden-shafted clubs and a couple of grizzled balls and set me loose on Swanston Golf Course on the skirts of the Pentland Hills in Edinburgh. The smell of bacon and eggs cooking in the clubhouse is an enduring youthful memory. As is the memory of the hours I spent searching for these two, irreplaceable balls. Dad was singularly short-tempered: “For God’s sake, keep your eye on the ball, Bruce! It’s the last one you will get from me.”

So I decided to concentrate my mind on fishing. It seemed to be the sensible thing to do. No one else in my family fished. Here, at least, I would be absolutely free to do my own thing and make my own mistakes; well out of range of maniac rugby masters, prickly gorse bushes and outraged green-keepers. I acquired an old greenheart rod, an antiquated silk line, a small brass reel and a dozen tattered flies. Within a few weeks I had taught myself how to cast and was off to the river.

That, I suppose, is the story of my life. I had discovered a joy which has comforted me for... well, a long time. In the process I also discovered my native land and its vibrant beauty. I found Scotland’s lonely places, amidst its blue-grey mountains and heather-covered moors. I learned to speak to statuesque red deer, rocketing grouse and cautious wildcat. My friends were playful otters, golden eagle and peregrine. I splashed and swam in remote summer-corrie lochans and saw sunsets and dawns that I will never forget.
 
Along the way, I also had the pleasure of getting to know many of the gillies without whose hard work my native land would be a poorer place. Myths and legends abound about their character, morals and humour and, believe me, every story is true; indeed, some are even truer. I was having a dram one evening with a senior gillie when I asked him to tell me the worst thing that had happened to him. “Well, do you know, I had a Gentleman out with me once and after awhile I realized that he had brought no whisky’ As though still stunned by the memory, he was quiet for a few moments. “What did you do?” I said. “Oh, I just took him to where there were no fish.”

One of the most famous angling developments in the middle years of the last century was that of greased line fishing for salmon, invented on the River Dee at Cairnton by legendary Arthur Wood. Wood claimed great success fishing for salmon in low water conditions using a line which floated on the surface of the water, rather than using a sinking line which “swims” below the surface. His most successful pattern of salmon fly, he alleged, was a small pattern called the Blue Charm and every angling magazine in Britain was full of the story.

However, Jimmy Ross a gillie at Rothes told me a different story. As a young man, Jimmy used to gillie at Aboyne on the Dee and knew Arthur Wood’s gillie. In the pub one night, Jimmy plied his colleague with drams and quizzed him about “all these fish supposedly being killed on a wee Blue Charm fished on a floating line?’ “Don’t you believe it!” replied Wood’s gillie. “It’s a great big Jock Scott on a sinking line that is doing all the damage with — and everybody for miles around lashing away with wee Blue Charms catching nothing!”

David Hanton was another of Scotland’s most respected gillies and keepers. The Hanton family served the Cortachy Castle Estate in Angus for many years. David’s grandfather was head keeper for nearly sixty years and two of his sons worked for the estate. David’s own father had been head keeper and David himself worked on the estate all his life, on the moor and as a gillie on the River South Esk.

David began fishing in Glen Clova, in the Burn of Heughs by the side of his grandfather’s house: “What a grand place for a young lad! There was a stream in front of the lodge which came down from Ben Tirran and it had fine pools with a trout under every stone.” David was injured on Vimy Ridge during the First World War and he told me: “I was hit by a whiz-bang... it was like being hit by the side of a house. As I fell to the ground I remember thinking, ‘well, that’s the end of your keepering days, my lad,’ but I recovered and I have been a keeper ever since.”

Today, on moor, loch, river and hill, I am constantly surprised by just how young Scotland’s gillies are. And as the seasons pass, they seem to get even younger, year by year. This is a great mystery to me because I have stayed the same age, from the time I lay in the mud on that rugby field until the present day. I have not changed one iota. I believe I owe this attitude to the happy days I spend amidst the cathedral-like wilderness of the land I love, and to the excellent company of the kindest and most courteous breed of men I have ever met: Scotland’s gillies.

Bruce Sandison is a writer and journalist and author of nine books, including the definite anglers' guide, 'The Rivers and Lochs of Scotland' which is being revised and updated prior to republishing.

He contributed to 'Trout & Salmon' for 25 years and was angling correspondent for 'The Scotsman' for 20 years. Sandison writes for the magazine 'Fly Fishing and Fly Tying' and provides a weekly angling column in the 'Aberdeen Press & Journal'.

His work, on angling, Scottish history and environmental subjects, has appeared in most UK national papers, including 'The Sunday Times', 'The Telegraph', 'The Daily Mail', 'The Herald', 'Private Eye', 'The Field' and in a number of USA publications.

Sandison has worked extensively on BBC Radio. His series 'Tales of the Loch' ran for 5 years on Radio Scotland and was also broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and on BBC World Service. His series, 'The Sporting Gentleman's Gentleman' and his programme 'The River of a Thousand Tears', about Strathnaver, established his reputation as a broadcaster.

Sandison has had extensive coverage on television. He wrote and presented two series for the BBC TV Landward programme and has given a number of interviews over the years on factory-forestry, peat extraction, wild fish conservation and fish farming.

Sandison is founding chairman of 'The Salmon Farm Protest Group', an organisation that campaigns for the removal of fish farms from Scottish coastal and freshwater lochs where disease and pollution from these farms is driving wild salmonid populations to extinction.

Bruce Sandison won 'Feature Writer of the Year' in the Highlands and Islands Press Awards in 2000 and in 2002, and was highly commended in 2005. Bruce lives near Tongue in Sutherland with his wife Ann.