Troutspotting – The Water of Leith

My name is Jeremiah Quinn and I am an addict. The OED offers, unhelpfully – ‘Addicted. Adj. 1 physically dependent on a particular substance. 2 informal - devoted to a particular interest.’ I think they are missing the destructive, harmful element of addiction with their definition, and I’ll come back to that later. Where better to feed my addiction -get well, in the parlance of heroin addicts- than Leith in Scotland?

The smackheads of Leith were immortalised in the book and film of the nineties – Trainspotting. The title, not related to the material of the book, is a reference to Begbie and Renton visiting the disused Leith train station (book only). An old drunk guy asks them what they’re doing – trainspottin’? There were train lines that ran from Leith and along the Water of Leith when it was an industrial river, dotted with paper mills and breweries. The river was heavily polluted. But then we stopped making things in Britain, the river flowed pure again, the train lines were converted into The Water of Leith Walkway.

Start at The Water of Leith Visitors’ Centre (we addicts call it the drop-in centre), which has a good little film about the river, and lots of things for kids to do, like lift small sluices to make water wheels turn. They also issue the free permit to fish the river. In fact, a fisher could walk from here down to Leith in a leisurely day, with friends or family tracking them but engaging in other activities (the banks of the river have wildlife, the visitors centre, several pubs, Murrayfield rugby ground, two tennis clubs, a Pizza Express, The Gallery of Modern Art, a shrine to victims of HIV, and much more).

I ran into a fellow addict fly fisher who explained the stocking policy: They put a couple of thousand 8-10 inch brown trout in every year. In 2007 to spice things up, they also put a load of 2-5lb fish. Only a few of these have yet been caught, and as the guy said to me – “Imagine that, pal, ye hook a five poond troot in a stream like thess – ya’ll shit yarsell, would ye no though but?” We had a good laugh about it and waved each other off wishing this success both ways (addicts’ solidarity). I won’t keep you in suspense, I just caught a handful of the stocked broonies. The river was flooded, but cleared up the next day only to discolour again when more rain fell. So it can change in a few hours.

The fishing actually starts upstream at Balerno, a bit out of Edinburgh, and it is really a country river (“it’s no natural, man!”) flowing between villages, which have lovely names of course – Blinkbonny, Juniper Green, Craiglockart, and a tributary called Poet’s Glen. But the urban business starts from the visitor centre. The path is well planned and heavily signposted, though at one point as you approach Leith the distances start to go up and up on the signs, and there are four signs in a row that say that the Museum of Modern Art is just a tantalising ¼ mile away. The distance from first to last of these must be a goodly country mile in itself.

An old boy, tin of Special Brew in his hand, poisoning his body with that shite, stops me passing to tell me I’d be “better off wi’ a wor-um”, but mostly the people are very friendly and many want to know about the fish in the river and where to get permits. It isn’t heavily fished, particularly up the top, but there are a lot of cyclists, joggers, and dog walkers enjoying the beautiful walkway instead of watching spirit crushing gameshows.

I was fishing a good stretch, and I heard rustling behind me up a steep, muddy, tree-lined bank. I wasn’t concerned as it was a central, busy stretch and I though it was a dog. The rustle became louder, there was a crack sound, a branch breaking, some thuds and grunts. This fat guy roly-polied down the hill and landed near my feet, all entangled in his fishing gear. “I’ve broke me fuckin’ line!” he shouted. He was wearing tartan. Lost on his way to the circus, or something. I’m not bothered about river etiquette much, but I don’t like anyone fishing very close to me, and especially not this guy. He’s bound to hook himself and fall in. Or worse, hook me and fall in. I don’t want to share his needles. He’s radge.

It’s obvious that The Water of Leith has long been an object of civic pride, particularly in the centre of Edinburgh. For example St Bernard’s Well, 1789, the centrepiece of a particularly bonny stretch, is a place where people used to come for the cure. You can climb down to a good pool below it, stepping out onto the brick construction in the river.

In Leith itself, access to the river becomes more difficult and the flow is slower, there are disappointingly few Trainspotter types, as it has been gentrified since the book and film came out. The choicest stretches are from Murrayfield to a little below the Museum of Modern Art, for fishing and for nutters.

I crossed over the weir by the Museum of Modern Art and headed downstream, an excellent spot. I had lots of pulls but didn’t bring in any fish. The water was quite stained so I wasn’t thinking much about cover, but cover has a special importance to fly guy in the city that is irrelevant to the rural angler. Cover not from fish – from people. There can be no doubt that if you fish in the city, eventually you will have stones thrown at you. I have been water-bombed and stoned on two stretches of The Dove (Izaak Walton Hotel private beats) stoned various times in Cardiff, and now also in Edinburgh. The new feature in Edinburgh is that they were using a high-powered catapult. The noise the stone made on hitting the water was ferocious.

You can imagine the guy seeing me fly fishing on the river, and thinking to himself, well, you know, can I do a bit of Trainspotting-style dialogue, please, please? Thanks, here goes, this is what he’s thinking, looking at me: “All a they cunts is intae fly fishin is Anglish, fae London, the cunts, fuckin… An them tha’ isnae Anguish wants tae be fae London which is worse than bein an anglish cunt, ya ken me, pal?” It’s harder than it looks, what Irvine Welsh does.

There are several things to note about using cover in the city. The first thing is that if they don’t spot you, they won’t bother you. Try to be generally discreet. If you are close in to a high wall, most of the time people walk along the top of that wall without spotting you or your rod or line. Generally they will be emboldened by being across the river from you. If they are small kids, and you fish on they same side as them, they will rarely give you grief. If you cross opposite them, giving them time to run away, and there are stones to hand, they may be tempted to use them. Simply moving away from the source of stones was enough in Cardiff to deter the kids.

This was a far cry from kids throwing a few aimless stones. No kid could pull a catapult that strongly. This was an adult, and I had no idea which direction the fire had come from. I was standing in two feet of water, out in the flow. If he hit me and knocked me unconscious it would be murder. A second shot thwacked into the water next to me. I was concentrating on my wading, but it hit a leaf on its way to me, and I had a rough idea of his position, opposite me above the high wall. I could have cut into cover straight across the river, but he would be able to get directly above me and drop a brick on me, and it would be hard to spot him directly up a sheer wall. I backed away, looking in the direction the stone had come from. A third came and hit a tree behind me (none of the shots missed me by more than an arm’s length). I jumped out quickly and got behind the tree. Remember that catapults take a few seconds to re-charge and aim. Air rifles normally take ten seconds. I snuck away using the thick trees as cover at a swift walking pace. This guy was roughly about the extent of the range of his weapon, 50-60m. At 100m he would have no chance. He popped up and stole away along the wall, pale blue jersey, crew cut, greying sandy hair. I thought how nice it would be to kick his face inside out. It made me angry that he thought my life and health were a joke, and it made me angrier that he spoiled a beautiful river for me. And I’m jealous of their river. How can the Scottish have The Water of Leith when we in London have The Wandle with no path, no riverside facilities, no visitor centre and no trout? They may be colonised by wankers, but they can flick a V at London over their river, any time they want to.

But what this incident didn’t do is put me off. And this is where addiction comes in. I can’t give up, even though I know it’s a little bit destructive, a little bit dangerous. A lot of people would take this as a sign that enough is enough. I shrug it off. I won’t stop fishing. I choose to go back to the rivers of the city because it gets me up in the morning. Choose it yourself. Choose life. Choose fishing. Choose waking up on a Sunday morning knowing exactly who you are and hitting the river as soon as possible. Choose dry fly. Choose Sage. Choose Leith.


Price: Free!
Quality: 6/10
Price/quality ratio: Erm…
Chavtastic: Not really. A few mad guys with Special Brew.
Debris: Eerily devoid of litter.
Water quality/smell: Totally pure higher up. Gets a bit grubby below St Bernard’s Well.
Wildlife: Wagtails, otters, kingfishers, seagull attacking a heron.