The Hebrides constitutes only 1.3% of the UK landmass but contains 15% of its freshwater surface area - a landscape made for fishing!
There are over 6000 freshwater lochs in the Outer Hebrides chain at the last count, almost all with fish in them and you are never more than half an hour's drive from our spectacular coast no matter where you are in the island - so sea anglers do not have to waste time getting to their destination!
At least five of only two hundred lochs in the UK holding the elusive and beautiful arctic charr are in the Hebrides: Loch Langavat, Loch Orasay, Loch Suanaival, Loch Benisval and Loch Croabhaig in the Isle of Lewis.
"For all the lochs on the Isle of Lewis alone, it would take one angler - fishing one loch per day for six days a week during the season - more than six years to fish them all." (Eddie Young - Trout Fishing in Lewis).
At the height of midsummer the Hebrides receives up to 22 hours of daylight! This means you can be fishing well into the wee small hours or round the clock if you want to!
The smallest salmon and sea trout loch in the world is in South Harris, Laxdale Loch. It is part of the Laxdale River system, which runs north-west in the centre of South Harris and flows through two miles of sand and sea pools at Luskentyre bay to the ocean.
In 1888 a Mr Naylor achieved the world record by catching 54 salmon in one day with the same rod on the Grimersta Estate, Isle of Lewis. He caught 45 the next and gave up at lunch! Grimersta also holds the record bag for any one season: in 1925 2,276 salmon, 591 sea trout and 271 brown trout were caught.
Unlike other fishing areas, sea trout are caught during the daylight hours as a rule in the Hebrides, with some local fishermen catching several hundred in a season!
The variety and enormity of fishing locations in the Hebrides makes the visiting angler's experience one of discovery and adventure. Lochs on the moor, steep rocky burns and rivers, productive lochs on grassy machair, fjordic inlets fed by short spate rivers, sea fishing from boat / on the rocks / from the shore or in sea pools... You can even fish on your own deserted island if you wish to and cast yourself away to paradise.
The Hebrides are the current holders of two sea angling records: the record for the biggest shore catch of common skate is held by G Mackenzie, who caught a 169 lb 6 oz prize at Breasclete Pier, Loch Roag in 1994. The record ray's bream was caught off Barra Head in 1978 by a Lieutenant Corporal J Holland, weighing in at 3 lb 13 0z.
