First of all my lead picture here is my own take on the Beauly from a visit there last summer. With embellishment! And my excuse for reliving those three fab days is that Ian Gordon has written HERE a fabulous blog post, mentioning the Beauly alongside Spey beat Arndilly, that could have fitted nicely into Chapter 9 of my book #howtocatchmoresalmon
I really love your writing here Ian. And the study of an on form fisherman assessed and distilled wih Ian’s own huge fishing experience, in the quote below:
Did it surprise me that Paul [Davidson, a River Eden expert] ended up as top rod during the first 3 days at Arndilly? No! But Why? Because he’s a hunter! Salmon that have seen so many flies tend not to take until something changes, perhaps water or weather, and very often a very small fly or even one fished on a dropper will do the trick. That or the tactic of getting down to them, using a sinking line and heavy fly, or maybe even a lighter one! However, another trait fish have at this time of the year is, because the fish are searching for gravel, so they can be found in shallow water at the neck, but more so the tail of a pool. Fishing such places can often bring a fish when all parts of the pool have been flogged and appear impossible.
Ian Gordon
Henry's salmon adventure | Scotland | Canada | Norway 
Henry – I’ve found much the same thing myself in late season fishing in New Brunswick. A sink tip can make a real difference, and often a very large fly where it would seem that a small one would work better. They often seem to prefer that big fly to have a lot of action as in the marabou slime flies rather than normal hair wings.
I wonder how Ian knew so many of my tricks….LOL Brad
Yes, Brad, absolutely. Just felt there was effective, experienced fishing thinking there, accessibly put. I’d expect nothing less from a guru like Ian (there’s more if you link through to the whole post), and it reminded me how often I fail to take ‘my own’ (yours, Ian’s) advice and keep plugging away in a rut not doing something different.. That said I often ‘think bigger fly’ – and it works, and yet that can be its own trap and I’ll continue big when if I’d gone back to wee I could have had more success.
Fascinating.
So I really like Ian’s bit about fishing the gravelled shallows etc (in late season) – that is quite new to me, put coherently as a strategy.
And in normal times you can often catch fish in the non/ pools bits. Running fish resting yes, in good water, and also for other reasons – pot of fish holding water created in recent floods that wouldn’t even know was there without experimenting.
Definitely an amazing blog 🙂