Lights On The Nith

The little motor was running well by the time I hit the meandering bends of the A701, I’d left Manchester before lunch and had made good time up the M6 into Dumfriesshire. My windows were open to cool the car and the pollen swirled about me. The sound of bird life burst in from time to time, bustling from within the bulging hedgerows and verges. It was one Hell of a day, maybe a bit too good for the fishing, I’d have to see, as long as there was enough water in the system there was always a chance of a migratory fish, it was to be more of a scouting trip in any event during the day, I’d fish seriously once the sun was gone and through the night. There wasn’t far to go when I hit traffic, of the slow moving dairy variety, so I jumped out and took a leak. I’d been speaking to Doogie, the bailiff on the Dalswinton Estate throughout the week, I’d found the fishing on the internet and had initially gotten through to the frightfully posh Lady Landale who had then put me on to Doogie. I’d been searching for some fishing on the River Nith first and foremost, it had been prolific for sea trout and word had it, might still hold a few at certain times of the year. I’d been hoping to meet up with Doogie straight away, so he could show me the fishing maybe, and I made directly for his house once the cows cleared. It didn’t take long to find his gaff, what I later discovered to be his son’s restored Mark 2 RS2000 escort along with a very smart looking woman sun bathing on a deck chair parked out front. I introduced myself to the lassie; she explained she was Doogie’s wife; he was down at the river somewhere, so I paid her the twenty quid for the fishing and went on my way. After driving into the immediate grounds of the stately home by accident, I got back onto the main road and eventually ended up following signs marked fishing, the final stint worth of directions came from a couple of estate farmhands at the foot of their brand new six figure tractors. The estate was really well kept, every house, cottage, barn and out building, all wonderfully maintained and painted in the same pale magnolia with pale green windows, doors and detailing. The family made a significant annual income from the wind farm planted on the marshes above the estate. I came out at the red iron arch of the Fortrack Railway Bridge at the end of the bottom beat, recognising it from the internet, then drove up river to the car park at the Ellisland Pool. The river looked beautiful, crystal clear and glistening, there was a good pace and depth to it despite the clarity; a perfect fly water. A sheen of iridescence shifted across the upper layers of the fast moving riffles with a golden haze shining in the air just above it, this was water meeting light on a symphony of different levels. I loved the place immediately, it just felt and looked fishy, the runs and the lies were all there to see, it was perfect for holding and guiding moving fish. Venturing upstream I came upon the ‘Scouts Flat’ section of the river, at the bottom of the deep pool, just before the water speeds up and plunges over a wide gradient of rocks and stones I saw some movement in the water and a glint of silver. It was a salmon, and it had got itself lodged in the shallows, stranded mid way up the rapid between some big stones, it had taken an unusual run, there was a deeper run bypassing the shallows on the far side. My heart leapt and I bound down to the water’s edge and in, the cool water came through my trainers instantly and gathered my trousers around my ankles. I got down stream of the fish so as not to startle it; there was clearly a lot of life still in it as it intermittently fought and thrashed against its predicament. The next time the fish went still I dipped my left hand into the water and slipped it under the fish’s flanks, letting the weight of its head rest on the flat of my fingers exactly as my right hand clasped the tail and lifted an eight pound hen out of the water. What a beautiful gleaming silver torpedo of a specimen, I can’t say I wasn’t tempted to keep her, but I don’t like to kill any fish, let alone a hen laden with eggs, I made that mistake as a boy and this was my chance to put it right. So I waded up the rapid as quickly as I could, my trainers struggling to find grip over the cobbles in the strength of the current. We made it though, unharmed, and I released her gently into the darker slower waters above. Watching her gliding into the depths like a missile, the silver bar became a shadow and was gone. I walked up a little way more until a very nice house came into view, but I was eager to get back to the car, I hadn’t eaten and wanted to get my salmon outfit built and fishing, when there is one fish in the system there are usually more. I could learn the river best on my own simply by getting into it and getting on with it. I’d wade the lot before dusk and hope for a salmon, then give it a breather before getting stuck back in with my sea trout set up after dark. On my way back to the car I met Doogie’s under study, a lad called Kevin, what a smashing lad he was, a couple of years younger than me, but born and bred in the area, he’d fished it from boyhood and knew the beat inside out. Kevin was walking his dog with his Mrs, but they doubled back to his Jeep so he could show me what flies to use, he even ended up giving me a couple and agreed to come down a bit later to fish with me. I was grateful; it can be dangerous fishing after dark on your own, even when you know the water, maybe even a bit too fool hardy if you don’t. I fished the afternoon away, it was glorious, even took a snooze on the river bank after a few swallies from my hip flask. Not one fish hit the line, so I took the salmon gear down just as Kev was arriving in his Jeep. He told me he’d spotted Doogie up at the top beat and to jump in, we’d go and have a blather and take a look at that beat, turned out I’d been fishing the lower beat and there was more fishing to be had. Doogie was in the process of cutting down all the fern, grass and weeds along the river bank at ‘The Shank’ area of the top beat, just above the lovely old stone fishing hut where we parked up. The guy was a machine; he’d been grafting none stop all day and had cleared a hundred and fifty feet or so of path of about four feet wide into something about three or four feet deep in thicket. He was using a machete, a petrol strimmer and a lawn mower. His sleeves were rolled up and he had a good base tan from his work covering some gnarly old muscular forearms. Despite his dark hairs, he struck me as being somewhat older than his wife, the sort of age that might have killed his city equivalent were they to undertake such a level of graft in that heat. He approached, and Kev introduced us, there was a sparkle of wit in his eyes which, wrapped in crow’s feet and matched with upturned mouth and leaning head suggested a man in humorous mood, he was, and in clear need of some chat too, the stories began. After the fishing tales, came the ghost stories, and the wit was replaced with an absolute sincerity as he ended every sentence with, ‘your honour.’ The stories were simple and believable, they related to the old house on the estate for which he had been the care taker during the time folk had lived there, it lay vacant and derelict now for obvious reasons. Others were about a pool on the river called, ‘Dead Man’s Hole,’ just downstream of the very same old house. The one that stuck in my mind though, related to Ellisland Farm which was on the other side of the river opposite where my car remained parked. There was a graveyard below the farm and an old stone wall left of its borders that protruded out onto the river bank. It was there, sitting on that wall that Doogie would regularly see the love of the ‘Bard of Ayrshire’s’ life, initially and then eventually, ‘The Belle of Mauchline,’ Rabbie Burns’ wife, Jean Armour. Rabbie had been keen to make a living out of farming, although without much success, though he did scrape more together farming than he did writing remarkably. The night was very dark, but clear, what light we got came from the stars and occasionally our head torches as we tied on alternative fly patterns or untied the knots that magically appear as if from nowhere in the dark, despite looking like requiring a deal of time and concentration to create. We started back at my car above the Ellisland Pool and fished down upon it. It’s remarkable how the world comes alive at night, just in an entirely different way to the day, sounds are amplified, and the eyes play tricks on the imagination, and the imagination right back on the eyes, Doogie’s stories of course do nothing to help all this! I sense Kev’s movements and then hear him upstream, I give my eyes time to adjust upon him and notice he is pointing up at the sky, ‘can ye see tha Adam?’ He says in his borders Scottish accent. I look up and see nothing but stars, I don’t know what I’m looking for, Kev’s persistence as we continue to fish down the pool causes me to keep looking up, despite the risk of losing my footing in a fast flowing river. I climb out at the bottom of Ellisland and head for a cup a tea, Kev isn’t far behind me, he’s excitable about something as he approaches. Pointing up I follow the direction of his finger tip until I see what looks like a very low satellite moving at the speed of an aircraft across the sky. Accept it isn’t an aircraft; there is no sound and no flashing lights. Neither is it a satellite, satellites don’t just stop, hover for a few seconds then completely change direction on a half penny, this was insane. Kev told me he’d been watching lights like this since he was a boy heading home from the pub, he kept it to himself though, a mate of his hadn’t back when they were boys and had been the victim of a tabloid story and internet video for which he still got ribbed now. For the next half hour we watched more and more of these lights traversing across the skies, often in pairs, occasionally in threes. They appeared to be communicating with one another, coming together, flying in sync and then shooting off in different directions. The really odd thing though was when a commercial airline came through the mix, of which there were quite a few. The lights would stop instantly, not get too close and then travel away from the aircraft. It was time to give the beat up a go so we took a drive up in Kev’s motor to ‘The Shank’ and walked Doogies new path up to the ‘Ash Tree Run’ and fished down through ‘Edge Chasm’ and ‘Royal Stream.’ It was while on the shillies at ‘Royal Stream’ having a sandwich that Kev spotted some eyes in the wood on the other side of the river. The strange thing about them was that the eyes were forward facing and quite spaced apart, at first we were thinking it could be another fisherman, but got no response to our greetings. We couldn’t fathom what this creature staring back at us might be, still looking intently, the creature was joined by another pair of eyes which appeared alongside it from nowhere, then another, and another, until the whole of the wood opposite was full of about 15 pairs of eyes, all staring back at us. It was so spooky that all we could do was laugh at them. We stood on the other side of the river laughing while 15 pairs of eyes looked back at us blinking. The whole thing quickly became disturbing, although neither of us would admit it, but both of us found ourselves packing up and heading for the car. Back at the bottom beat we started at the top and fished the ‘Policeman’s Pool.’ Kevin fished below me this time, he seemed to have an inert sense for spotting the lights in the sky and we watched a great deal. Tow such lights began heading directly towards us from the south, there was a faint one travelling higher up and a much brighter one travelling directly below it, indeed it was so low and so much brighter than anything else we’d seen I couldn’t take my eyes of it. They came in so close that the tree line on the far bank eclipsed them for a time, only the lower light then came back into view, directly above us, I would say no more than two or three hundred feet up. It was dimmer than it had been. I waved as you would do at a helicopter at that height and it must have hit full beam or something because it very quickly became very bright indeed, lighting up the river for a hundred yards upstream and down, it’s light became a white bar across the river in front of me as a car headlight might. Then it shut off, and as it did so I could see right into it, in the same way you can see into a light bulb as the last of the power is burnt off and the silhouette of filaments is disclosed. It reminded me of the shape of a wire lantern I’d bought in China, I did not see it for very long, it may have been a three dimensional hexagon or octagon; the skeleton of the structure was opaque, it was difficult to work out how big it was without knowing the altitude, but it was bigger than anything man made that it could perhaps be mistaken for. That was enough for us both, we got off the river, went back to my car and drank some whisky. Kev left for his bed, he had a shift the next day, I on the other hand lay in the fishing hut to try and get an hour’s sleep before dawn. I couldn’t though, and watched the last of the stars arc overhead and vanish via the windows in the shed, and the ridiculously long trains came out of the magnetic mountains behind rumbling over the Fortrack Bridge pulling lead. There was no sign of Jean Armour as I packed up to leave, though I was certain her eyes bored into the back of me when I wasn’t looking, so much so I ran away in the dawn leaving a few bits of tackle and a cup. A couple of years later, having fished with Kev many times since on the Nith, those lights remain up there, apart from Doogie that is, the sparkle in Doogie’s eye is gone. Doogie eventually killed himself after his step daughter broke it to him that her mother, his wife, was having an affair with a local drug dealer half her age and quarter his. He’d tried the first time he heard to gas himself in the escort, she broke it off. When he learnt the next time he made sure and blew it off. Kev blamed himself for a time, he said he should have known, kept an eye on him, seen him more, but he’d seemed himself, seemed okay. I suppose he was a storyteller to the end, only this time telling a version of himself, and it couldn’t have been further from the truth. It’s not always easy to spot the signs in a man who needs to take pride and maintain dignity despite it all, no doubt such traits made it harder for him to deal with it all; adding to the fires of the smelting pot in his mind as opposed to opening the release valves onto the shoulders of another to cool away in the Nith. One thing for sure, he wasn’t in his right mind, nobody who kills themselves is, and it can’t therefore be a sin in my book, so God rest your soul Doogie, if that’s what you want.