Pretty Avielochan in Speyside is far more than just a stop on the way to somewhere else,
JUST NORTH OF AVIEMORE AND right next to the A95 sits a beguiling little water that offers enjoyable top-of-the-water brown trout sport in a spectacular setting. Avielochan is easy to miss. Blink and you’ll have driven past the Osprey Fishing School sign marking the entrance, and be all the poorer for it.
The A9 is a stone’s throw away, running parallel to General Wade’s Military Road, and the A95 is even closer, but take the turning to reach the lochan and you’ll find yourself in another world.
Natural woodland and fertile ground surround the water, which is crystal clear and weed-fringed in parts, with larger areas of lily pads and weed beds towards its southern shoreline. The views east and south-east are dominated by the Cairngorm mountains and the overall effect is so enchanting and so unexpected as to be almost disconcerting.
For the last 13 years, it has been under the loving stewardship of Jim Cornfoot, who leases it from a local estate. The lochan is spring fed and completely natural, though it was stocked with rainbow trout before Jim’s tenure. Since when, it has, to all intents and purposes, reverted to a natural fishery.
Jim learned he’d attained the lease just before going to Canada for seven weeks. He asked the Alvie hatchery to stock the lochan with 120 brown trout between 1lb and 1½lb. On his return, after further thought, he decided he wanted to stock only fingerlings and added 300 three-inch fish, 300 five-inchers and 300 nine-inchers. It hasn’t been stocked since.
Jim worked to clear a burn to enhance spawning habitat, while aquatic fly life, minnows and stickleback combine to provide ample feeding. Whenever my friend Pete Aston, Euan and I have visited over the last few years, there has been no shortage of well-fed, hard-fighting and pretty brown trout. There are real lumps to be caught, too.
The drop-off is sublime and skirting around the shoreline stalking rising fish with a dry-fly or generally prospecting for bigger fish will keep you occupied for hours. On our last visit in early June, Euan and I were chatting to Jim by the boats when a huge fish erupted on the surface just 20 yards from the mooring. I quickly tied on a dry-fly and walked over to cover the area where it had shown. I began twitching the fly through a light ripple and a few minutes later a fish supped it down. For a second, I thought I’d managed to connect with one of Avie’s bigger residents, but it turned out to be a more modest trout, which was still fat,
