Over the past few weeks conditions haven't  been kind to us, it was either bright or hopelessly flat calm, along with  humid Thundery overheads and fish that despite being numerous seemed reluctant to take, what we needed was a big change in the  weather, and this past week we got excactly what we asked for! 

A total of 160 for the week (provisional) has comfortably been  our best week  of the season and in no  doubt  brought about by a cooling of both air and water temperatures along with a good flush of fresh water, and after persistent  rain all day on friday the river peaked at 44 inches on Saturday around midday,  

We started the week on a rising river followed by a further rise on tuesday night, but once it settled the fish came on  the take with with 119 fish taken for 3 days, (Wednesday,Thursday,Friday)  and I would have expected similar numbers for Saturday but the levels made many of the pools on the lower  beats difficult to fish, but on the plus side it gives us good levels for the coming weeks.

It was good to see  the excitement and anticipation from both anglers and ghillies each morning around the back of the Ulbster arms before setting off to their beats for the day,  listening to stories of big catches, all the takes , pulls, plucks and the ones that got  away, sharing jokes and good banter reminds us all  what a pleasure and fun salmon fishing truly is.

Most fishing this week managed to pick up a fish, and with so many fish in the book it is difficult to squeeze everybody in to  the weekly report, but special mention must go to Kenny Johnston fishing as part of the Leach party, teamed up with an experienced Thurso regular Freddie Sutherland,   Kenny caught his first  Thurso salmon on beat 5, followed by a brace the following day on beat  3 and another in the evening from beat 4. 

The leach party put their fair share in the book for the week with Peter Duncan and Denis Lyons excelling with 17 fish each. Father and son team Peter and Nigel  Cox  shared a few fish between  them with Peter showing  his experience catching a cracking 16 pounder from beat 10.

And finally Bill taylor fishing the river 40 years this year managed to pick up a brace from beats 3 and 10.

Looking ahead to next week loch more is spilling over the top which will give us good water levels next week, fresh fish continue to enter the system, the weather looks like it will remain cooler than previous weeks, so all in all prospects look great.

Nature notes.

The banks of the Thurso has a vast  and varied collection of insect life, some can be rather annoying like the midges and cleggs, but some can be both colourful and  beautiful  like damselflies and dragonflies.

While they may not be as large in numbers we still have a few of the common species found throughout the British isles.

The best place to see these colourful creatures is on the upper river around loch beg and beat 11.

The ones to lookout for are the small red damselfly (pictured) and the azure or common blue.

While dragonflies are not seen as often as damselflies a few common hawker can be spotted from time to time.

The best way to tell the difference between the two species  is to look at their wings while resting on grass or reeds,  dragonflies hold their wings out like a plane while damselflies tuck their wings in at rest. And a dragonflies eyes are much larger.

Tight lines to all next week