SKYE was majestic last week as only Skye can be when the sun pours down endlessly from the heavens.   Even at midnight it was still shining, casting an eerie orange glow from below the horizon into the velvet blue northern sky.

We were sereneded by cuckoo, curlew, oystercatcher and lark.  Snipe thrummed in the evening air; a rare grouse cackled its way low over the heather. Wonderful.

But the angling gods were a little against us.  My host Richard, a fly and coarse fisherman of considerable experience and a man of many west Highland summers, and I both struggled against the elements in which periods of sultry hot, flat calm alternated with a chilling north-easterly wind, which on the second of my two days, rose to force-7 and hurled everyone off the loch.

The mayfly hatch spluttered and never seemed to get into full swing and we were at times forced simply to row around chasing the hatch and the moving fish to try to get some action.

The trout came reluctantly to the fly, whether fished dry, wet in the surface film or dragged along at a variety of depths.  The dry natural seemed to be the most tempting, but often the fish came short. We both recorded just two keepable fish each over the day and a half we were on the water together.

Not much to show for considerable effort. As ever, the location was the real winner and I count myself very fortunate to sample it.