42

The gillie is called Dennis. He lives at the end of a lane above the road at Tomich.

There are wellies and fishing tackle in the porch. In the tiny living room, his mother brings me a cup of tea. Dennis is a single parent and he and his daughter live with her.

Surely I've seen him before? In Glen Strathfarrar, glimpsed through a screen of alder and birch trees, two people side by side on a shingle bank where the broad river sweeps round noisily. They stood with their backs to me some distance away, a picture of concentration. Dennis – it must have been Dennis – with a net over his shoulder, bent his head to speak to the little old lady beside him. Puffs of white hair fringed the pork-pie hat she wore. She'd a rod in her hand, gave a cast and the line made an arc over the water. I watched for some minutes till they moved on, she teetering over the loose stones of the gravel bed while he laid a supporting hand on her elbow to steady her steps – a respectful rather than intimate gesture.

‘Mrs Dunbar,’ says Dennis. She's 87, he says, and an enthusiast. He remembers she caught two salmon that time on the Farrar. ‘She heard that the Queen Mum caught her last salmon at the age of 89 and she reckons to equal that. Or more.’

‘I can't remember when I wasn't fishing,’ he says. ‘In primary school, if there was a spate, I'd be down at the river right away. I caught my first salmon when I was 11.’ His grandfather and great-grandfather were both keen fishermen and the tradition continues. ‘My daughter Katy's seven and she started when she was four. She's keen as mustard.’ One day she caught 20 trout.

What's the attraction of fishing? ‘It's all about the take,’ he replies – the split second when the fish takes the fly – ‘and suddenly you get this huge surge of adrenaline.’ On the other hand, for others, the best sport is when the fish is on the line and they're fighting to reel it in. ‘Mrs Dunbar, for one – for her, it's all in the play.’

When Dennis was young, his mentors were the Blue Charm and Willie the Fish (real name Fraser) on the rivers Glass and Farrar. When the Charm advised him to concentrate on one or the other, getting to know every pool and riff and where the salmon lay, he chose the Farrar, concentrating on the lower stretch at Culligran. That's in the latter part of the season. In spring, he's on the Hill Lochs for trout.

‘You could put a dozen fish down on this carpet and I could tell you which loch they came from,’ he asserts without the hint of a boast, mere matter-of-fact. Well, I'll believe him. Tonight, there are no trout on the carpet, only a box of flies by the hearth. He ties them himself, delicate wispy things, multicoloured, some of them iridescent and glittery. The largest by far, a carroty looking affair, is for catching pike. Among the smaller flies is the one he calls Juliet, named after the wife of Frank Spencer-Nairn who owns the Culligran Estate in Glen Strathfarrar: ‘She's very pretty but she doesn't catch a lot.’ (He's joking.) In fact, he says, it's one of his favourite flies and, as for the lady Juliet, she's a fine fly-fisher.

Dennis says ospreys often frequent the Hill Lochs. ‘Most days you'll see one or maybe two feeding. They've marvellous eyesight. In the last two or three years, there have been sea eagles. There's a good phone signal up there [there's none on lower ground] and, if I see a sea eagle, I text Dan and he comes rushing up.’ Dan is the RSPB man who took over from Dave at Corrimony.

Usually, he takes his guests on the loch from nine to five (office hours!) but occasionally they'll go out again at eight, in the gloaming. ‘Often you get bigger trout at night,’ he says – maybe even five- to eight-pounders, which are weighty fish. These are likely to escape the pot – most of the big ones are dropped back into the water.

Midges can be a torment in late summer. ‘I've seen guests with paper bags over their heads and holes cut for their eyes. I've seen guests get out of the car and run to the edge of the loch and push out like mad for the middle. It's usually better out there. But if the wind drops, they'll find you.’ He's not affected as much as some but, at the worst, he'll pull a net over his head. He reckons that children are less susceptible than adults – or so it seems with Katy. Loch or river fishing can be equally affected. On the River Farrar, he calculates on losing about four days’ fishing a season to midges.

Dennis says that some clients like to be left to fish a river on their own and he'll leave them for an hour or so, returning now and again to check progress. Others prefer his company – his advice and his chat. He's a great talker, is Dennis.

He says that once in late September a stag came down the hill in Glen Strathfarrar looking for hinds.

‘I love your Highlands,’ said his woman client, an American. ‘I've seen a stag and now I can hear a piper.’

‘My God,’ said Dennis, ‘it's my mobile.’ (It had a pipe tune as ring-tone.) He grabbed it from his vest pocket, it shot out of his grasp and splashed into the pool and, silenced, no doubt lies there still.