Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Graying still caught on the Annan River in Scotland

The Annan River in southern Scotland runs through the Dormont Estate, all 500 hectares of it. That amounts to a little over 1200 acres of land that has been in the same family for 600 years.
"My official title would be Land Master," Jamie Carruthers, the current member of the family managing the estate, said.
The slice of Scotland is six miles south of Locherbie known for the PanAm flight 103 crash 27 years ago killing 270 people,  including 11 on the ground.
We were here visiting relatives that live on the Dormont Estate. "We keep the land as a farming feature," Carruthers said.
He "lets" land out to farmers for dairy and beef cattle grazing and raising some feed crops. "You can see from how green the grass is from all the rain we get, that this is excellent for dairy cattle," he said.
But this part of the river is known for fishing, namely Atlantic salmon, brown trout, sea trout and grayling.
"We have generations of people coming here to fly fish for trout, mostly brown trout. Many people that stay here have been coming with their dads and granddads. They always book the same week every year," Carruthers said.
No other fishing is allowed while people have rented or let the cottage near the river. During their period of rental, they have exclusive rights to fish the river.
For more information on Dormont Estate and fishing the Annan River visit www.fishannan.co.uk.
Read more about River Annan in this Sunday's Oakland Press.
 View of the River Annan, Dormont Estate, Locherbie, Scotland. Photo by Donald Heermans II.