TALES OF THE RIVERBANK.
Like so many good ideas, it hatched in the bath. Not, I hasten to add, my long standing fisherman’s fantasy of catching a wild Scottish salmon, hurrying it, muscles still quivering to memory of the surge upstream, to a traditional West Highland smokehouse and then -abetted only by a loaf of brown bread and a fistful of lemon wedges- gorging myself to a standstill on the end result… I’m actually referring to the fly with which I hope to complete the toughest part of my pipedream; catching a fish in the first place.
Now, it’s not his use of the bath, per se, that perturbs Andy Murray’s wife so much as his propensity for lying motionless at the bottom of it for hours on end, in a scuba diver’s mask, peering up at the surface.
Because every new fly the House of Hardy’s professional Casting Coach designs for himself is subject to exhaustive testing and, not content with a quick check on how each creation moves in the water, Andy sees nothing untoward in a detailed assessment of his handiwork’s salmon seducing allure from the proper, fish-eyed perspective.
Besides, bathtime antics aside, Andy’s wife already thinks he’s barking mad: Some days he’ll stagger home miserable as sin because, although he’s caught a fish, his casting has been below par. Then again, he’ll come home a blatantly fish free zone yet deliriously happy in the knowledge that his casting has been so good that, were a fish out there, he’d probably have caught it.
But this, having never fished for salmon before and forewarned that many fisherman descend on Scotland year after year only to slouch disconsolately home again without so much as a sniff of a fish, is precisely the kind of dedication and expertise I’ll need in my armoury if my expedition isn’t to end up dead in the water at the outset…
From a distance, Hardy’s own ‘beat’ on the river Tweed where it chuckles through Kelso looks pretty close to pastoral perfection. Even if it is ludicrously early in the morning. But, standing on the bank in sternum snug, neoprene waders and a jacket so short it wouldn’t look out of place over Winnie-the-Pooh’s vest, the waters take on the somewhat less cheery colour and consistency of iced tea. Into which I must shortly wade without, pray, loosing my footing…
As he rigs a 15ft carbon rod and Bougle reel -a design unchanged since the 1930s- Andy explains that most salmon flies are designed and coloured to represent shrimps; the last thing a salmon will have eaten at sea before a special gland shuts down its appetite so comprehensively that it won’t eat again until finally leaving the river after spawning. Unlike fly fishing for trout, which you can locate by watching them rising to the surface to feed on crash-landed flies, your job with a salmon fly is to jog the disinterested fish’s memory into an act of instinctive aggression: “Oy. You lookin’ at my burn…?”
“So we won’t be doing any bug wafting” -Andy’s description of the endless, false casting which dry fly fishermen use to pin point a rising trout before dropping the fly as near to its nose as possible. “Salmon fishing is all about methodically combing the beat, yard by yard, trying to pass a fly across the
nose of a salmon that’s resting on its way upstream” he explains. “That’s why women so often out fish the men; they’re not into the machismo of trying to outcast each other, and so tend to comb the water more methodically.”
“Aye” confirms a voice from behind. “And I’ve seen that cause more than a tiff or two in the past…” Enter John Edey, a veteran ghillie of 15 years experience. “Bright fly for a bright day” he murmurs, tying Andy’s latest, shiniest iteration of the famous Willie Gunn salmon fly to the end of my line with a special, double turle knot which ensures its properly “presented” to the fish. Bright fly for a blithering idiot, more likely: I occasionally cast for trout in my youth, but it’s quickly clear that using a salmon rod is an entirely different kettle of fish, and the best way of ‘presenting’ this particular fly to a salmon properly is to hand the rod straight back to Andy.
…I’ve just spent half an hour ham-fistedly beating the waters of the Tweed into a lather that would pass muster atop a pint of Guinness, with 50ft of PVC line tipped with a practice feather. And so impressed has Andy been with the soundness of the thrashing I’ve administered to his river that I’m convinced he’s on the cusp of suggesting I give up fishing immediately in favour of the headmastership of a particularly strict, disciplinarian school.
Trouble is, I’ve only just inched to within a thousand miles of mastering the straightforward, overhead cast for Andy to inform me that this is pretty much useless on the Tweed due to high banks and vegetation behind you at all times. I need to learn the inexplicable Spey cast. I even need to learn the wholly impossible Double Spey cast. Both of which keep the fly predominantly in the water, and the line elegantly curled through the air in close proximity to the caster; much like that ribbon wielded by gymnasts in the Olympics. Only much, much longer. With a vicious, three pronged hook on the end.
Having inadvertently slapped both myself and Andy on the back with lashings of line on several occasions, we both escape risk of further, more serious injury with John’s pronouncement that it’s time to take to the boat. This is one of the few stretches of the Tweed that offers boat fishing, and I’m grateful: From my mid-stream, revolving bar stool in the stern I can use a simple, overhead cast without overmuch fear of hauling in the shrubbery. Mr. Edey is less grateful: It’s no wonder he boasts forearms like condoms stuffed full of walnuts; the current here is strong and he must row constantly to keep station. He has also been known to wear a crash helmet to avoid having an ear torn clean off by the involuntary, Pitt’s Special aerobatics of an amateur’s errant fly. And I’m pathetically grateful to note that, having watched my bank bound practice efforts, he considers his lobes sufficiently safe to do without…
“Cast now… And again” a relentlessly rowing John gently, but constantly, coaches as I take my first few, tentative casts. “That’s you…” his way of letting me know the fly is now behaving vaguely as desired in the water.
“There’s no guarantee of catching a fish at any time of year” he confesses dishearteningly. “I’ve had one banker who’s been coming here for nine years, spent £22,000 on fishing and never caught…” Clickclickclick… Fzzzzzzz… Suddenly, the line is disappearing off my fizzing reel so fast I fear, for an instant, that I’ve hooked one of the RAF’s passing, tonsure height Tornados. I’m so astonished I forget to strike. A good thing. You do not strike when
salmon fishing. Whatever it is on the end of the line streaks about the river like a rubber bullet fired into a concrete bunker as John pulls for the shore and leaps over the side with a landing net. Patience is essential here; try to land the fish too fast and it may break free. Eventually, rod tip dancing like a bullrush in a gale, I’m able to bring it within range of John’s probing net, and find myself peering down at a 7lb salmon. This is not a big salmon -the record catch being a monstrous, 64lb fish- but it is a salmon. My first. Actually, I’m secretly thrilled this fish wasn’t bigger; it would probably have won.
Both John and Andy are speechless with surprise and reckon I’ve just used up a lifetime’s luck in only 8 minutes. The rest of the morning -entirely fish free- is spent happily wading waist deep through other selected spots on the beat utterly failing to master the mysteries of the Double Spey cast. But it’s absurdly pleasant to stand in the middle of the river watching Andy putting the fly through an effortlessly balletic repertoire as, on the slender pretext of teaching, he has himself a quick comb of the neighbourhood.
Thoroughly absorbed, I should -but for my impending appointment with the smokehouses of the West Highlands- genuinely not have minded coming home empty handed after my morning on the Tweed. After all, as Andy reminds me, “a bad day’s fishing is better than a good day’s work…”
Initial investigations suggest that smokehouses along the west coast of Scotland are thicker on the ground than ticks on a sheepdog. But, being inordinately proud of my first fish, I’m determined to have it smoked in traditional fashion rather than see it lost amongst shoals of salmon making their way to the supermarket shelves via the conveyor belts of the mass market suppliers. And two names renowned for adhering to traditional smoking techniques keep cropping up; the Inverawe Smokehouses and Macdonald’s Smoked Produce. Perfect; assuming I can persuade them to each smoke one side of my catch on the spot…
Self confessed culinary pyromaniac Simon Macdonald’s smokehouse isn’t the kind of place you stumble across by accident. Hunched at the head of Glenuig Bay, with spectacular views across the Sound of Arisaig towards the islands of Eigg and Rum brooding offshore and Skye’s snow capped Cuillin Hills to the north, Macdonald’s Smoked Produce smokery is scarcely larger than the scant flock of crofters cottages that are its only neighbours on this wildest of shorelines. Such isolation doesn’t bother Simon one bit, however: “For two years I ran the ferry to Eigg” he remembers. “And once you’ve lived there, you can live anywhere.”
Nor, it seems, does a location that will inevitably call upon the services of the RX300’s permanent 4-wheel drive over several months of the year deter a customer list that would do justice to the visitors book at Buckingham Palace. Then again, it’s hardly surprising that one of Simon’s favourite entries in his own visitor’s book boasts the one word address; ‘Britannia’… For his produce was voted Best Smoked Salmon by the Scottish Food Awards in 1997, and he still holds the title today.
Somewhat ironically, Simon gave up smoking and fishing in order to start smoking fish. “I love playing with my food and I love playing with fire” he grins. “And 15 years ago I could see the fishing industry was in terminal decline
here” he recalls. “So, though I already a fair bit about the subject, I took myself off to a Highlands and Islands Development Board course on smoking, built myself a one room smokery and went to work…”
Today, his smokery has expanded to just 5 small rooms from which, when the pace really hots up just before Christmas, he and a small band of helpers can produce a seemingly impossible 150 sides of smoked salmon a day.
A vacuum packing machine is the only sign of technology on site, which leaves Simon doing everything else strictly by hand. Using a favoured knife, now so old it’s literally half its original size, he can fillet a box of seven Shetland sourced salmon in as many minutes, which leaves my fish ready for the next stage in the process, salting, in under 60 seconds. Laying out the sides, skin side down, on a sloped worktop already coated with salt, Simon first dusts them with a fine coating of sugar “To take the sting out of the tail” he chuckles. Then he heaps on salt. “It may look haphazard” he warns. “But I’ve been doing this for so long that I know exactly how much salt to use; the thickest coating goes over the thickest part of the side, and you’ll notice I also took a divot out of the skin at the thickest point to ensure the salt gets all the way through the flesh…”
The sides lose moisture to the salt for a period about which Simon is understandably cagey. All I can say is that in the case of my fish it means he’ll have to be up at 5.00am in order to thoroughly rinse off the salt before hanging it in the drying room to cure. So by the time we return, gently belching local kippers, the following morning, a lazy curl of smoke from one of the smokery chimneys announces that he has already lit the fire box under a kiln.
As with most traditional smokehouses, Simon burns oak to produce smoke. But, swearing by the added flavour it imparts, his comes in the form of chippings and sawdust that were once the oak whisky barrels of the Speyside distilleries. “I always make the journey myself” he chortles. “Because it can be a fairly intoxicating experience driving all that way with a car full of whisky soaked sawdust… I was pulled over by the police the other day; they couldn’t believe the smell coming out of the car, threw my car keys into the heather and said “By the time you find those, you should be sober enough to drive on.”
Smoking salmon is not a hot process, the temperature inside the kiln hovering at around 20 degrees centigrade. Nor is it an exact science. Trial, error and years of experience have taught Simon how much smoke to release into the kiln housing racks of vertically hung sides, and for how long. So it’s mid-afternoon before he declares himself satisfied and, with the sides having now shed about 17% of their original weight in moisture content, the process finished.
Normally, much as a joint of beef improves if allowed to stand after roasting, the sides would be left to hang for a further day. However, time is not on our side, and Simon reluctantly sets about the tricky job of carving my side before, strictly speaking, it’s ready. Much to the astonishment of colleagues he meets at food fairs and trade shows, every single side that leaves his smokery has been carved by him, by hand. “They always ask me what machine I use and I
always tell them I do it by hand. So they say ‘Yes, but what machine do you use to carve by hand?’ And I say, er, a knife…
“Never slice it horizontally” he explains, transforming the fish into successive, translucent layers at astonishing speed which will take him through a side every one and a half minutes. All day if necessary. “The smoking process doesn’t necessarily impart an even strength of flavour through the side. By cutting down into the fish at a shallow angle, you ensure that each slice represents the full depth of the fish and balances out the flavour.” Simon slices the side with skin on, interleaving each cut with the thinnest sheet of clear plastic. “If the side was packed without them you’d never separate the slices again” he explains. So adept at this process has he become that once packed, it is impossible to tell that the side has actually been sliced. Much to the embarrassment of a customer who recently rang to complain he had sent her an unsliced side; he waited on the phone whilst she open the packaging to prove his point…
But it isn’t just smoked salmon for which Macdonald’s Smoked Produce has become famous. Simon will, by his own admission, smoke just about anything. Indeed, his reputation was first built on his international award winning Lochaber smoked cream cheese. A phone call from Bolivia once invited him to try smoking Peruvian fruit-bat, but “efforts to source one have not succeeded.” Production of smoked buffalo cheese too is restricted by “the limited numbers of people willing to milk the buffalo.” Nonetheless, his smoked product range today almost reduces salmon to the mundane: Alligator from Louisiana, ostrich from Oxfordshire, flying fish from Barbados… He has even smoked Blue Beluga caviar for one client (“but I’m not telling you how in case I have to do it again”), and on one memorable occasion, as the result of a challenge from chef Anthony Worrall Thompson, butter…
Simon’s clients are used to him achieving the impossible, though. Urgent calls for immediate supply are commonplace, and the tranquillity of the bay is all too often shattered by the arrival of a private helicopter hell bent on the acquisition of a single side of salmon. “The only thing we haven’t had here yet is a submarine” He smiles. And Simon’s delivery service is no less legendary: A Kingston woman once rang for a delivery of smoked salmon for her husband’s birthday the next day. And Simon’s protestations that it might prove tricky so close to Christmas proved well founded when the caller clarified that she was, in fact, talking about Kingston, Jamaica. Somehow, nonetheless, he filled her order within 24 hours…
Down the coast in an equally stunning setting overlooking Loch Etive, Robert and Rosie Campbell Preston’s Inverawe Smokehouses at Taynuilt also smoke their salmon using traditional, oak smoking methods. But what strikes me, as the other side of my cherished catch is consigned to the smoke, is how much variety there is in the ostensibly similar techniques employed by different smokehouses.
Robert Campbell-Preston started smoking salmon 21 years ago after a particularly savage storm totally destroyed his fish farming operation in Loch Etive, overnight. Like Simon, he finds he simply has a knack for smoking, and is still on hand 24 hours a day to adjudge each batch of salmon ready or not as it comes from the kiln.
Though a larger operation than Simon’s, capable of producing 1000 sides a day when pushed, Inverawe’s principles of smoking are essentially the same: Bigger kilns are used here, with larger, underfloor fire boxes fed whole local oak logs from access hatches outside the smokehouse. The taciturn Derek Kennedy ministers to these gently smouldering fires day and night, clucking over them with all the care and fierce pride of a mother hen. “They need to be checked every three hours” explains Rosie Campbell-Preston… It is very much like having a baby, but they never grow up and sleep through the night…”
My fish is prepared for the kiln in much the same way as before, but I can’t help noticing that Inverawe takes a much larger divot of skin from the side before salting, and that the timings of the process -particularly the smoking- are markedly different. Robert has found that in order to smoke to his satisfaction, the sides must remain hanging in the kiln for anything up to 48 hours; depending on differences is outside weather, temperature and even wind velocity and direction.
Much like Simon, Rosie’s client list reads like a back issue of Hello magazine. Though, short of finding it hard to resist dropping the occasional “HRH” into the conversation, she is also reluctant to bandy names about. “People who shop with us don’t want their names in print any more than they already are” she explains. “We specialise in the upmarket undersell; a niche market for lots of lords and ladies…”
Inverawe’s understated quest for perfection has also reaped the laurels of success, most notably with their roast smoked salmon which is the proud owner of a Gold Award from the Fine Food Guild. Both Rosie and Simon are effusive in their enthusiasm for this relatively new, hot smoking process which sees kiln temperatures rise to about 80 degrees centigrade following a preliminary smoking at traditional temperatures. Having tasted the end results, all I can say is that if you’re bored of smoked salmon, this will give your jaded taste buds a wake-up call they simply won’t believe.
With my second side of salmon finally emerging from the kiln, all that remains is for me to settle down beside the very waters from which my fish emerged just a few days ago, and eat myself uncomfortable. Whose produce do I prefer? That wouldn’t be fair to say… Both sides of my catch have been lovingly smoked using strictly traditional methods, and though I’m amazed by how wildly different the two taste, this is one occasion when I’m really not prepared to play favourites. All I will say is that, even if you didn’t catch it yourself, if you’ve never before eaten properly smoked salmon of this quality, you simply haven’t lived.