Why Fly Fishing Becomes an Obsession | Tarquin Millington-Drake

0:02That's the sound of zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and the power to burn body fat. Storm, energy for life. Storm Energy Blend helps boost metabolism, which in combination with exercise and a healthy diet helps burn fat. This product alone does not produce weight loss. Individual results may vary. At the age of six, I think I would be able to get up and get in my boat and I would disappear on the river for the whole day. There's no doubt that Scotland's sort of demise fuelled a desire and hunger to go abroad. The most ridiculous thing about Russia was people going home in a bad mood because they caught 49 fish instead of 50.

0:40Alta is special. It's the Nirvana. You know, you will see a bow wave crossing the entire river following the fly coming after your fly. And people love that. Yeah, it's so exciting. If the Brits are plebs, will you put me into the Americans? Hello and welcome to The Luxury Dispatch, the podcast that reveals the refined and the rare. People, items and stories that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain, and today we shall be stepping into a world where patience is prized, craftsmanship is measured in feathers and thread, and luxury is found not in noise but in stillness. It is the quiet, absorbing and faintly mystical world of fly fishing.

1:18From hand-tied flies to heritage rods from remote rivers to the rituals that surround them, fly fishing sits at that fascinating intersection of sport, tradition and conservation. A pursuit that takes people all over the world seeking out the perfect catch, no matter the cost. To guide us in that world, I'm joined by Tarquin Millington-Drake, angler, writer and lifelong devotee of the river and everything it teaches. Tarquin, welcome. Thank you. How are you doing? Getting there. Now, I wish for you to think of me as a sort of golden retriever. A charming, very attractive dog that soaks up information.

1:57Because I wish to delve deep into your mind and your experience of fly fishing. Because this is a world to which I've been recently introduced. And I find totally fascinating. and I have been astonished by the lengths people will go around the world for an experience of the perfect catch and trying to find a particular... Is it a quarry you'd find in... How would you refer to a sort of fish catch? I guess. I mean, you know, people seek different species. You know, I always say, you know, when we start looking after people, they just want to catch a fish. Then they want to catch the most fish. Then they want to catch the biggest fish.

2:45And then they go off in different areas of sort of speciality after that. That tends to be their journey. And of course, fly fishing goes back a very, very long way. The aspect of fly fishing we're talking about isn't necessarily the Whitehouse and Mortimer style of fishing, you know, the kind of quiet, flasky type. This is much more a sport, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, Whitehouse and Mortimer actually are a great example of how it should be, not because people should relax, but in my experience, people who approach their fishing in a relaxed manner are often more successful than those that are sort of feverish and have objectives.

3:49And having said that, in your opening, You said that fishing is about patience. I think most of the really good fishermen would argue that actually patience gets nowhere because a patient fisherman is someone who will set themselves up and sit and wait hoping something's going to change. I mean, what do they say? The first sign of madness is doing the same thing time and time again and hoping you get for a different result. yeah um the good fishers will try something and then do something about it if it's not working so i think a better description actually is determination rather than patience the the the less good fishermen tend to have patience because they just sit there and don't change anything the good ones um probably have a lack of patience yeah would be the negative way of exploring it or explaining it or have determination and therefore adjust what they're doing okay but let us perhaps define initially at least what constitutes fly fishing as opposed to other types of fishing i i suppose that the key difference is the method in which the the bait for want of a better word the word that everybody understands is delivered to your quarry or the fish that you're trying to attract.

5:25There's trolling where you drag something behind a dinghy or a sport fishing boat, etc., which is an art in itself. There's spin fishing where you're casting something out and retrieving it. there's um ledgering and float fishing which again you're using a fixed spool reel casting things out and then waiting for a reaction and then fly fishing is using a crafted plastic which allows which loads a rod which allows delivery of the bait which in this cases a fly and therefore it's light in most cases um through a repetitive action therefore um the rather than the bait delivering itself because of its natural weight sometimes it has lead sometimes it's metal whatever sometimes it can be a big glob of worms with lead or whatever, the actual person doing the fishing is using the power to deliver the bait, if that makes sense.

6:37Okay. And that's probably a very long winded way of doing it. I've learned bits and bobs about flies these days, but I mean, we're not going to go too deep into that. Although I, um, I heard that in the pre-war period before this sort of the empire started to wind up getting exotic, very colorful birds around the world was very straightforward. And then what happened after all was they started painting them. But there were these wonderful names for certain types of flies, and they could make them almost identical. These sort of women up in Scotland, amazing crafts, would put so much effort and skill into creating these lures to catch the fish.

7:17And in the earlier days of fly fishing, and do correct me if I'm wrong on this, what set it up as this sort of pursuit of the wealthy ultimately, sort of at high level sporting sort of estates, was people were drawn to Scotland because of the salmon there. And they were drawn to Scotland to a large extent because Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought Balmoral in 1952 and everyone wants to be quite close to them. Railway made it quite straightforward to get up to Scotland. Yeah. And that was the season is a lot longer than the shooting season, for example. I believe the season goes, I mean, literally the shooting season finishes at the end of January, right up until November or something.

8:07Yeah. And so, um, so people were setting up big things at lodges and they were creating a whole ecosystem around this world for fishing. Yeah. I mean, it also became part of the McNab. I don't know if you've ever had a McNabber on your program. No, one day perhaps. I know one, but maybe explain what the McNabb is. Catching a salmon is part of a McNabb. Can you explain what the rest is? A McNabb is, I mean, in the old days, it was catching a salmon, shooting a brace of grouse and a deer all in the same day. In the very old days, it was on your neighbor's estate without him knowing. That doesn't happen these days, but people are still trying to do McNabb's.

8:53It's getting a bit more difficult in scotland because of the lack of salmon but you know mcnabs have been around a long time and salmon has been part of it for all that time i have a friend of mine um who is an old guards officer who has a signed mcnab card because he got one signed by her majesty queen elizabeth right which i think is quite a good one yeah that is he caught it while he was on duty in balmoral yeah which i thought was rather good a friend of mine's grandfather actually shot the salmon because they saw them jumping up a waterfall so he took the liberty of cheating the salmon while coming back from cheating grouse i think it would be now certainly um but scotland has gone through a great decline um in fact i say that i read about the the decline and Scottish salmon.

9:43And I read that in 2023, it was recorded that 32 ,477 salmon were caught, which I thought sounded like a lot. And your response to that was? I mean, yes, Scotland's gone down. My response to that is you need to compare it to the rod effort. And the rod effort in Scotland is probably 30 plus days per salmon. For that number? for that number that's amazing so you know every salmon that's caught you know you take the number of salmon caught divided by the amount of rod days that have been put in by people going to scotland it comes out that they've tried they've been trying for 30 days or more that's amazing which you know if you put it in perspective is is four one week holidays which for some people is four years which is sort of where you now come in because people are now wanting to go further a field to look for their salmon and so forth and you are one of the things that you do is guide them through that process and take them to the places yeah i mean but before we get there can i just ask you how you started fishing i uh it was deep countryside um in my day but i grew up in a place called Shepparton, which has Shepparton studio fame.

11:08And in my day, we looked out over fields and tractors and all that good stuff. It's now almost part of London, I think. And we lived on the Thames. And from when I could remember, I was fishing, catching stickleback then bleak and gudgeon um on you know little quill floats with a with a size 16 hook and a maggot and um i remember you know at the age of six i think i was i would be able to get up make my own eggs and bacon and get in my boat which had a motor believe it or not and I would disappear on the river for the whole day. I mean, if your parents let you do that now, you'd be clapped in irons by social services.

12:09But that is what I did and that's how I lived. There was this side channel of the river which used to go crystal clear and was full of fish. I used to fish there. We had a lake that I used to fish and then we had the main river. and between them they kept me entertained all the time basically i wasn't big on seasons and licenses i didn't really know that either existed when i was that age um and then um when i was about i don't know 16 17 i found this much floppier rod in a shed at home and with a weird reel because i was used to fix spool reels um but this reel just sorry what's a fixed spool reel um god i have to go into a technical term uh it's what most people who course fish use yeah it has a bail arm you flip it over to cast etc okay um and if it's if the bail arm is not flipped, the line won't yield at all.

13:18Fly rods, if you pull a fly line at the reel yields, unless the drag is on mega tight. I understand. Um, so I didn't understand the reel either because it didn't have any sort of way particularly of stopping the line going out. Anyhow, I soon sort of worked out and then I had to teach myself to cast and I could see chub on, in the river rising to dry flies um and and that's really what got me intrigued was how could i deliver what i saw them eating to them and the answer was a fly and then i was like how do i deliver a fly because a fixed spool spinning you know rig is not going to deliver a size 16 wickham's fancy or whatever it was that i was using so i had to work out how to cast a fly rod so what I ended up doing was putting the rod on the ground and pulling the line back on the bank whatever length it was and then if you pick the rod up but left the tip on the ground and then you could pick it up and in one big whoosh using the weight forward of the line you could send the whole rig out across the the thames and deliver the fly to where it needed to be so those were my first casts with a fly rod and then i learned to keep the line in the air which obviously you need to do as a fly fisherman to make false casts which helps with what um lengthening the line yep uh delivery accuracy and it looks very all that looks very smart it looks very impressive yeah i mean the less of you the less of it you do the better you know if you're teaching someone they always do it too off too much too often yeah you know bang bang out is what what you ideally want to do but anyhow i learned to do that and the rest is history really do you remember when you caught your first salmon i do i caught my first salmon my very first salmon i poached thankfully with the owner of the river we were young you know teenagers the river was very low on the isle of aaron and um we managed to net out a salmon to everybody's amusement yeah um because you could lie down on the rocks and see the salmon underneath and you could get at them but i did you know i'm pleased to say i did catch my first salmon on a fly also on that river yeah and it sadly that river's almost finished now it used to catch 150 fish a year it probably catches five now really sadly it's a a victim of the salmon farms and so therefore what is the fishing landscape now like?

16:18Where are people now going? And where are you taking them for this sort of salmon fix? And then after we talk about salmon, I'd like to explore further afield, sort of more exotic fish as well. And the sort of, the kind of habits of people behind that as well. Because fishing has become an obsession for a lot of people, hasn't it? Yeah, and I think it always was. I mean, when I started Frontiers in April of 93, we opened an office in London, in Albemarle Street. Yeah. Nice address. And people used to come around from whites and boodles and hang out and talk about fishing with us. It was an effective location.

17:09Yeah. um and uh you know in those days i'm not sure i mean in those days i'm not sure we even had a fax machine right at the start so people used to the reason why they used to come around is they used to come around look at a slideshow and we were educating people that there are sea trout in argentina what is a bonefish you know they do have salmon in iceland or norway or whatever you You know, it was a major educational, that was our role. And we used to do big events in the Lansdowne Club and invite, you know, 100 people to come and see a slideshow and I would tell them about whatever the destination was.

17:51And so it was, you know, people were going abroad, but it was in its infancy then.

18:00And I never, we had a sort of rule in the office that I never wanted to feed off Scotland's failure. I didn't feel comfortable. So we never did, you know, Scotland's terrible come and fish with us. We never took that approach ever. And we still don't. Plenty of people ring me up and moan about Scotland and we'll try and look after them. But we didn't take any pleasure from Scotland's demise. um and i served on various committees with a guy called ori vigson and north atlantic salmon fund and you know we we we did our best and people are still doing their best but um the trend is overwhelming sadly and and it's it's not that different you know in norway or iceland anywhere else to be honest so um Um, but there's no doubt that Scotland's sort of demise fueled a desire and a hunger to go abroad, which in turn fueled a desire to go and catch different species.

19:14And it started with people wanting to go salmon fishing abroad, which they've been doing since, you know, the late 1800s. Yeah. Um, and you know, there's rivers in Iceland where, you know, the, there's a house by river. I I know it's called the English House because it was the first fishing lodge that the English set up in Iceland in God knows when, etc. But that and then it turned into sea trout fishing in Argentina because that's something that our market understood. It was still using a double-handed rod. It was still salmonids. It's a long way to go for fishing. Long way to go. Is it right that Jim Ratcliffe is one of the biggest landowners in all of Iceland because he basically bought up fishing land?

19:55Well, he brought up... The way it works in Iceland is if you own the land, you own the fishing rights. You can't own the fishing rights on a river without owning the land around it. And he's not the only landowner. And, you know, on a lot of rivers, there's 25 landowners. They all own a bit of the river and they lease the river to what they call a leaseholder. Surprise, surprise. And he runs the operation and brings it together. he'll run the lodge he'll hire the guides he'll hire the chef he'll bring it all together he'll bring in the transfer companies to bring people to and from the lodge etc etc and the farmers who are the people who own the land will divvy up the income in different ways the most common way being how many fish were caught on your water versus my water yeah in terms of percentage but that has its own problems in that you know in days of old if if your water was better than my water then i'd get in with a digger and try and make mine better but what i'm actually doing is digging up the reds which are the salmon nests and the spawning grounds so you know they've had to adapt to make sure that doesn't happen so with all that if we think back to what i was saying about scotland in um the 30 day per fish yeah what do you call it the rods um what's the road effort you know day effort yeah so what's what would what would it be in iceland in equivalent now people because i've heard it's very oversubscribed so presumably it's quite popular um but if if people are getting one per 30 days in scotland what's what's sort of the expectation these days i mean i think the expectation in Iceland, certainly in prime time, is two or three fish a session, and there's two sessions a day.

21:50So pretty radically different. Now, that can go horribly wrong. Droughts, too much water, etc. Different rivers produce different numbers of fish. But you know rivers with bigger fish tend to produce less fish rivers with smaller fish tend to produce more fish yeah um so you're not guaranteed that but certainly they're hoping to catch some fish each day and that just really strikes me as interesting because let's say they're doing four to six a day yeah if you take a day shooting for example there's going to be a lot more if you aim straight there's going to be a lot more um how do i put this uh there's going to be a lot more to show for it yes so what is it that draws people to fishing that is different because obviously you must be filling a different need than going on a day shooting for example i mean it's really interesting you say that because you know i've looked after clients for 35 years if you include my time before frontiers and the guys that fish are generally pretty nice the guys who fish and shoot are generally pretty nice the ratio drops to like 50 50 for the hardcore shooters really okay yeah and i think there's just more testosterone i i don't know but they're a different breed but you know most of them do fish and shoot do you think perhaps there's a showiness to the kind of rituals of shooting that there isn't for it's fishing seems to be more potentially more humbling pursuit you've got to get very wet you're probably going to get cold you you know you might blank i believe it's blanking is the term for not i think that you know shooting um and in some ways that's a very good description of it it doesn't really involve field craft the way fly fishing does okay um And to explain that, you know, a good fisherman is observing very subtle differences in water, in the flow of water, which is indicating to them where fish might be, where they might lie, which in turn makes them fish differently.

24:34the way they'll fish one little bit of water will be different to how they'll fish another little bit of water i was talking to a friend the other day about you know pool we fish in iceland it's got two flows and you know you work the fly and and the first time it goes through the fast the first fast bit which is more powerful than the second fast bit so you slow the fly down because the water does does the the fishing for you and then there's a sort of dead gap of slower water so then you've got to work the fly, then you come back into faster water. None of that exists in shooting particularly.

25:10Yes, you have to observe the wind, the height, etc. But in terms of field craft and sensitivity and observation, two quite different things. Yeah, because I guess every reel has a sort of purpose, whereas every shot is, you know, you know you're going to get another opportunity in a second, so you just, there's less value. And then another friend of mine, he made another great observation, which is you come off a day shooting, you've had a great day. Yes, you might have been out of it on the draw or not, but generally you've had a great day. Yeah. And you come off fishing and you catch a couple of salmon, you're happy.

25:52the difference is if those final three four shots of your day you missed you end the day with a bit of a niggle in your head and it's like damn i shot badly on that last drive or whatever whereas if you caught a couple of salmon there's just there's just nothing to be unhappy about you've you've had a great day and as he said you know we're shooting you're almost only as happy as your last few shots yeah very different yes take a point um i'd like to ask you about um russia yeah because that was a popular obviously it's it's a difficult place to go now but similar to iceland it has superb uh fishing rivers yes and stuff and but you were one of people that did the tours yes of russia yes so perhaps just could we reflect on that stories you could tell from there just as it's you know and it's one of those places you know if you wanted to go today you probably couldn't i mean it'd be or at least it'd be quite dangerous if you did yeah i mean it's at your risk and you can't use a credit card and you can't get travel insurance etc etc but you know russia came at a time when people felt that scotland was really getting bad I mean, that was 1991, 92.

27:16I mean, compared to now, my God, you know, they didn't know what bad was then. But it was actually a breath of fresh air for salmon fishing because what was happening in Scotland is there was less and less fish. The people who were on beets, who were tenants on beets that did have fish or rivers that did have fish or good beets would obviously stick with them. And the number of salmon fishing was, as a salmon fisherman, was probably declining because you were either a have or a have not. And the have nots were really struggling. And suddenly this incredible fishing appeared. And we talk about numbers.

28:03you know the the most ridiculous thing about russia was people going home in a bad mood because they caught 49 fish instead of 50 or 99 instead of 100 yeah i mean it it puts iceland in in in the shadows um you know the most memorable day you know we would test it for us who work there it it's almost just you you know the mystery went away you know when we were preparing to guide the next day we would go out park the boat with an anchor get up start fishing our line you know yard two yards three yards up to 30 yards we wouldn't move the boat so in other words if we hadn't caught multiple fish between the two of us one fishing one side one fishing the other side if we hadn't caught two or three fish by the time we got our length of line out so 20 30 yards of line out fishing there were no fish that we'd move right i mean how spoiled is that yeah ridiculous absolutely but it was like nothing here we go somewhere else and he one day we went test fishing the lower river there were three of us we were using the earplugs that we use in there for the helicopters and we thread the earplug the the leader through the earplug then we put on what's called a condom it's a little plastic tube to hold the hook in the right place and then we put the hook on i think we caught i think we caught 65 fish in about four hours on earplugs christ you know that's what it was like amazing yeah and is it you might not be able to tell me everything but is it a a social pursuit i mean for example all the lodges and things in the evening after you know what happens off the river in the same way what happens off the peg yeah can often be as fun yeah a hundred percent a hundred percent and i and the other great thing just as a draw a line on the fishing in russia is for for a lot of english people it was the first wilderness fishing they'd ever done and a proper wilderness in that you know we were fishing 67 kilometers of of river between 20 people yeah with no if you're in scotland it would have been six kilometers of river between 20 people yeah and people could just walk for miles they could go all night there was midnight sun they could fish all night and they could fish all day they had never experienced non-beat fishing you know when you go when we went fishing you know with your guide during the day your beat was five kilometers or six kilometers long both banks it was mind-blowing for people and and what happened is they they became better they learned more they were able to experiment it revolutionized the the the salmon fishing community that just got a hell of a lot better at salmon fishing because of russia and made the um i guess it sort of puts the uh the test into a bit of perspective because i think people see the test yeah i mean the test is a whole different but um it meant that they would come back and when they were fishing in scotland they were much more skilled and much more experienced you know in In Scotland, it takes multiple years to experience 10 fish on the end of your line.

31:46In Russia, it took the morning. Yeah. A couple of hours. In the 90s, there was this sort of English-American, I don't want to be with the Americans. You know, they wanted to be, the English wanted to be with the English. And the Americans couldn't really care who they were with because they're just basically a pretty friendly bunch. but the Brits wanted to be with the Brits and um I had this classic I won't name him but I had this guy come in to pay for a trip to Mexico and um he came in Jimmy you're right yes fine and he's writing his check as he did in those days and he's like I talk when um are there any Brits will there be any Brits in the lodge and I'm like yeah there are actually some Brits Jimmy you you'll be fine don't worry about it you know good so he writes his check and he goes back to white and about 20 minutes later the phone rings and they're talking it's jimmy it's like yeah jimmy is a problem he said i've been thinking if the if the brits are plebs will you put me into the americans and that's how it was in those days you know they didn't want to be the americans that has gone away completely yeah it's now it it's yes it's as sociable as it is shooting and nobody is sniffy about you know if somebody's an idiot which they it's pretty rare they might be an american they might be an englishman they might be a frenchman it doesn't matter now it's it's just fishing and you know it's pretty rare you have a bad egg yeah to be honest and interesting to hear though that americans come over because obviously americans have i mean they have plenty of space of their own frankly yeah but i mean this is this was off the charts atlantic salmon fishing yeah fine okay i mean off the charts compared to anything what's special about the atlantic salmon i think the most special thing is about about it is it rises um and therefore you see it take so it's very visible because people talk about gin clear waters as well they want to see it be able to see it through the water yeah but what they really want to see is the take and you know in in russia and iceland and so on less so in scotland because of peaty rivers and stuff but you know you will see a bow wave crossing the entire river following the fly coming after your fly and people love that yeah it's so exciting and sometimes they crash out of the water sometimes they come flying out of the water like a tuna and just pound the fly and you know pacific salmon don't do that you need a sink tip okay oh okay yeah interesting um then further afield then you i heard about the seychelles yeah mexico kenya yeah um i mean there's so many yes the french progeny i'm assuming this i mean what what are people trying want to get over there that obviously salmon aren't there so what are people fishing for with i mean they've got different reasons to go to different places i mean the seychelles i was one of the first people to go to seychelles i lived on a boat for two weeks before there was even a resort there or anything i remember i was sleeping in this cabin and the ceiling was like three inches from my head i couldn't turn over because it was too like it was like being in a coffin um and very hot but uh it is world-class saltwater fishing i mean still is world-class saltwater fishing the bone fishing is off the chart it's the it's the it's the rusher of saltwater fishing what are you finding there uh lots of different species but you know in in the early days you could catch in a morning bone fish that would take you a week in the bahamas for example maybe a bit smaller but still you know what you caught in in a heart in a morning and both fish are very pretty yes uh not hugely silvery yeah incredibly strong and powerful but then you know really thanks to the caliber of guides that were in the seychelles which were mostly south africans they worked out how to catch the giant trevallis the the trigger fish which are the sort of the eat coral.

36:22Giant trevally is big, isn't it? Yeah, the giant trevally can be 100 pounds. That's a sort of trophy fish. Yes. Yeah. Milkfish was another massive achievement. And they fish with it with a sort of green slime imitation. And they feed off the top. But now you can go to the Seychelles and catch, you know, 10 or 12 different species in a week, all on fly. So people love it. I mean, it's... And I guess the sort of hovering question of all this is people want to go away to Iceland for let's say a weekend or a week's fishing or they want to go one of your trips what are people coughing up for this because it's not this is I mean this is not just going to your local river with a rod it's it these are these are expensive outings I mean yes they're very expensive outings and um

37:15it's difficult because in the in the world of atlantic salmon it's expensive because of the rarity of the species and becoming more so because of the rarity of the species um so it's driven not by what it costs to lay on necessarily whereas it was in russia i mean we used to have people fly in you know it's two hours by helicopter they'd land and go okay i get it i get it why it costs what it costs because everything around them has been flown in because there's we used to be able to float wood down the river but otherwise and we and and towards the end we we did what we call the winter fuel road where we loaded fuel tanks on tanks and drove across the frozen tundra with these tanks, because we used to bring in about 150 tons of fuel a season.

38:17But otherwise, you know, there are other times we use the largest helicopter in the world, which is the Mi-26, which is the size of a 737. And that would bring in 26 tons at a time. So in Russia, there was a reason why it cost a lot. in iceland it's basically market for forces in that the farmers think they can get more for their lease yeah the leaseholders pay them that and then they charge more people uh more people you know more money to the clients and the clients pay and are still fighting over the space and therefore it fuels the increases um places like norway it's less productive but there are rivers where it's expensive because they have salmon and they have very big salmon which are particularly rare the same in canada so sorry to press you on this what do they spend yeah i mean you know if you came to me and said you wanted a cheap trip i would be hoping that you're ready to spend three four grand per person not including your flights for a week a day a week for a week and then it goes all the way up to you know 30 plus yeah um per person yeah yeah that's quite something it's more expensive than shooting potentially pro rata only the really top end stuff yeah yeah but what a lot of people want to do now which is becoming much more possible in iceland is they don't want to go to a an eight eight man lodge or a ten man lodge they want to go to a four six or two man lodge and have a river to themselves but this is the thing and enjoy it to themselves yeah this is this is the thing you've got limited space because you haven't got Russia, you've got limited space, more demand.

40:18You've got people and inevitably every single person, if they're, if they're people who are going to be spending a lot of money, none of them want to be doing what everybody else is doing. They'll all want different, more experiences. So is the fishing industry and is, you know, your business, is it set up to provide more as oversubscription will then breed the need for better experiences? there's a few there's a few issues with it in that um

40:52there's very little of i i want to do something that nobody else is doing you know there's a few people who want to be the pioneer of going somewhere but there's less places to go new places to go but that is definitely a thing but what they want is you know the the problem is and i've done my my frontiers career for 33 years nowhere's got better nowhere has got better i can tell you that right now not one place has got better and some have shown signs of getting better or sustaining themselves but then they succumb to the same old problem which is over rodding overpressure and they start to go down.

41:40And the guys who are trying to operate it, you know, some people will accuse them of being greedy. But the reality is what they're trying to do is operate in a wilderness place. Now, it might be wilderness helicopter. It might be wilderness three, four hours drive. But it's pretty rare that you have amazing fishing in cities or around cities. You know, it tends to be the further away you can get from humans, the better the fishing will be because it hasn't been ruined and pressured. Um, and therefore the economics of that in terms of getting all the shit there is horrendous. And that their way of solving that is to have 10 rods instead of eight rods coming to the lodge.

42:27Got it. Because how do they make the economics and i'm in this horrible place where i don't like creating the exclusivity and yet i recognize that the less pressure means the better chance that that fishery or wilderness or whatever it is will actually survive because if you pile the people in it will succumb to the pressure yeah so it's a real difficult one well with that in mind any chance you could tell me a little bit about the altar and i ask because i've heard um it's quite special and i imagine if there's anyone who knows about it it's you yeah i mean altar is special um could you explain it bit yes i will i mean certain first it's history you know the roxburgh family have been fishing for something like 150 years and still are and are very loyal to it and and um have a wonderful relationship with it um and they get it um which is incredibly important um to those that haven't been lucky enough to go which is the majority it's the nirvana and the reason it's the nirvana is is the average size of the fish is 24 26 pounds which for an atlantic salmon is a monster um most of us can only dream of catching a 20 pound fish um this is like Disneyland.

44:10Now, are there lots of them? No. Um, but there are good years and bad. Um, ironically, well, encouragingly in some ways, the best year I ever had was in 1992. The second best year I ever had was in 2022. Okay. Which is pretty cool. Um, but you know, you have more than realistic chances of catching a 30-pound fish.

44:42You definitely have chances of 40-pound fish, and you definitely have chances of 50-pound fish on a fly, on a river that is beautiful fly water. It's not deep. It's not swirly. You're not having to fish deep. You're fishing classic, beautiful fly water. it's in norway in 300 miles north of the arctic circle in northern norway okay and it's run they celebrated their 300 year anniversary last year by an organization called the lack the alta lax fiscary interrescence gap and what they did is all the owners formed a board which is the which is the ali and the ali run the river and they have i don't know the exact details so forgive me if i get it wrong but basically by royal decree they are allowed to ignore some of the regulations of norwegian fishery management and run the river themselves and they do it in a very good way in that they have times of the year when the locals can fish times of year when they invite foreigners to fish which is only about four or five weeks of the 12-week season and other times where you've got a little bit of both and you know people want to fish outside the main foreigner weeks which are syndicate weeks they can enter a lottery which is run extremely professionally it's sent to Ireland or wherever you know to a professional lottery company that gives them the results so there's no shenanigans um they might win two days and they come and and fish and you I've had plenty of people ring me up and say, I've won in the lottery.

46:29Who can I have my boatman and where do I stay and all that kind of stuff. So because you mentioned the Roxburgh. Yes. Of course, they have been tenants and they still are tenants for, you know, over 100 years as a family. And OK, so if there is. because you're mentioning syndicates and seasons and so forth out or not somebody goes to farlows they buy all their kit they leave rod in one hand yeah um you know they they feel kitted out what does someone do next if they want to go have a good fishing experience they can't just sort of drive up to a river and start fishing then there's a process right there's there's there's um yeah i I mean, they...

47:14What's the next best... Somebody wants to go into this. I mean, if they've gone into farlows knowing nothing about fishing, then step one is to learn to fish and to engage an instructor and learn to cast. And then they should go somewhere where they have a good caliber of what they call gillies in Scotland or guides elsewhere, where they actually start to learn and understand what they're actually trying to do and why they're doing it. And, you know, from there, they can make decisions about you know what they enjoy and what they don't enjoy and and where they want to go fishing and whether they want to join you know most people end up in scotland because they've been invited to join a party by somebody else and then they might start taking their own parties if they can find a tenancy or they ring somebody like me but you know they ring somebody like me i will grill them about their experience because that tells me what i think they would and wouldn't enjoy their fitness levels all that kind of stuff has an impact yes fishing's tiring you know some of it is very tiring because you're in a canyon and if you can't get out of the canyon because you're 75 and got a you know dodgy knee then you shouldn't be in the canyon okay that so that is a critical question and actually more recently one of them one that people don't think of either no and it's happening i wouldn't say more and more but we people aren't telling us about their fitness levels accurately and it's causing problems because they can end up in places where they're struggling yeah but if we don't know and then sometimes i get calls like why have you sent this guy here?

49:07And I'm like, because I didn't know he had a heart bypass last week or whatever it is, you know, but you know, if they don't tell us, you know, we ask, but if they don't, and you know, so that is a really important question. Okay. And let's talk a bit about conservation, which is obviously a very critical part of your life. Yeah. um where are we with regards fishing who's helping who's not what can be done and um maybe we could start by just pointing out that all the time you're talking about catching fish there is a catch and release um protocol is there yes i i mean i did a catch and release campaign i think in 1995 yeah and i argued that it was part of the solution and it it's been part of the solution but there isn't actually a solution because the solution the problem is much greater than whether you return fish or not um but i feel interestingly um one estate agent and trout and salmon magazine were the only two people who had real issues with that campaign um which is odd but generally people really responded and i think fishing abroad helped that because pretty much everywhere else was catch and release and i think we do a great job of catch and release in scotland anywhere now um i don't think the brits have an issue with catch and release at all um but the problem is much greater than that the biggest problem is um the salmon farming which is you know we talked about the marcri where I've caught my first salmon.