Ninety-nine-year-old Tom Saville shares a few of his favourite memories
1. FIRST CAST
In the early 1950s, I read every possible book on trout fishing and quickly realised fly-fishing was the method to use. The Fishing Gazette carried an advert by Foster Brothers of Ashbourne, famous rodmakers in Derbyshire, so off I went to buy my first outfit.
There, in the almost holy quietness of Foster’s upstairs showroom, with the feeling that the ghost of Charles Cotton was looking down at me, the manager, Arnold Moseley, took me through the ceremony of choosing a fly-rod. Sensibly, I asked Mr Moseley, an expert fly-fisher, to choose one for me, as well as a Young’s Beaudex reel and a Kingfisher DT silk line. “Just a few minutes to splice the line and load the reel, sir,” he said. What service! The line was loaded for right-hand winding, and to this day I wind my fly-reels that way.
I caught my first trout on fly on the Bentley Brook, a tributary of the River Dove (the exact spot is pictured).
2. FAVOURITE TROUT FLY
The Orange Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear is my favourite point fly for trout, rarely off my leader at Rutland and Chew. I fished it in the 1970s and caught a rare tiger trout in Loyalsock Creek in Pennsylvania. I also used it to catch rainbow trout from a stream flowing off Mount Kenya in Africa. It has a lead wire underbody and dubbing blend of 80 per cent hare body fur and 20 per cent hot-orange Antron.
3. THE CR ATHIE
I decided to create a salmon fly that imitated a small fish and put it to the test one May week on the Crathie beat of the Aberdeenshire Dee with gillie Sandy Macdonald. I caught five fish. By midweek, when I took one on my first cast in McLaren’s pool, Sandy could only remark, “It had to be, sir. It had to be.” And so, when it came to making entries in the logbook, Sandy and I agreed to call the new fly “The Crathie”. It was also successful for me on the Junction pool of the Tweed, and has become one of the most popular flies on the Dee. The correct recipe, should you wish to tie it, is a low water double hook, silver tinsel body and fine silver wire rib. Add a black hairwing, pale blue hair or hackle-point beard, and a black head.
4. CLASSIC BOOK
Reservoir Trout Fishing w
