This is a follow up article about the marvellous fishing we had at Amat over the last week and two days of the 2003 season, with some more photos of what turned out to be a record week for the beat of 43 fish.
This catch came after the long drought and periods of exceptional heat that lasted from mid May till Monday 22nd September, a period of 17 weeks! We certainly had a few little freshets during that period, but salmon have an uncanny ability to foresee if the rise in water will be prolonged and therefore making it worth their while to run the river. They were obviously correct as the exceptional heat and very dry hill reduced the river to a shrunken state, often within 4 or 5 hours of any rise. Subsequently very few salmon/grilse entered the river over this long period with the grilse run being nonexistent. We did have dribs and drabs coming in after mid August, but the big movement of Salmon/grilse occurred during the last week of the season and over the first week of the closed season, when they obviously knew it was their opportunity to move out of the Kyle and run the river. As it turned out the river stayed up until October 11th.

The beats below Amat over the final week by all accounts did not fare well at all, but at Amat we had fish moving into and through the beat, certainly for the first 5 days of the week. With rain falling as snow in the mountains over Monday & Tuesday and four frosts over the week this was excellent conditions for the back end. When I saw the snow on top of Carn Deirg I was confidant we would have a good week, as it turned out we had a superb week.
For the last seven back ends the weather has been just too good, often we have had an Indian summer right into November. In some years to get the real beneficial effect of the low water temperature it is desirable that the frost jumps quick as the suns warmth gives a rapid difference between air and water temperatures, it is best if it turns into a brightish day with the sun warming the air. Often this is the case, with the clear skies that helped bring on the frost continuing into the next day. Even down in the estuary in the brackish waters of the Kyle at Bonar bridge in 1991, I remember catching three salmon in just over an hour just after the frost jumped quickly one September morning, often it seems to have slightly more effect on cock fish, and of the 51 caught on Amat over the last eight days, 34 were cocks and 17 were hens.
It was a tremendous effort to release all 51 salmon/grilse, I was delighted as was Jonnie Shaw on behalf of the estate. Four were released with the hook still in their mouths, people seem to forget that this is an option. I have heard guests in the past say that they had to kill a fish because they could not get the hook out, if the hook does not come out almost immediately and rather than pull twist and haul at the fish simply cut the nylon as near to the fly as possible and release fish.