Brown Trout are found in the local lochs.

At the right time of year you could see Sea Trout and Salmon running up the island’s main rivers as they return to spawn. The Corran, Lussa and Inver are probably the best bet. You could also catch them fairly close to the shore line out in the bays.

However you will also find large numbers of brown trout in a number of inland lochs and burns (large streams or small rivers) and ready to take the fly from good anglers. Brown Trout tend to thrive in these waters being the member of the Trout and Salmon family most able to adapt to different circumsatances and Jura does have have fairly acidic rocks.

The only other fish you will find inland are the Eel and the Three-Spined Stickleback fish (sorry I don’t know their proper Latin name) But in my humble view neither of them taste well so I would stick to the trout and salmon if you can.

The three dorsal and two ventral fin pollack fish

Fishing from the shore or small boat does offer a wider range of tastes for those so inclined. If you have never tried the Lythe or Saithe fish (also called the pollack and coalfish respectively) now is your opportunity. Although the numbers of cod and haddock are decreasing around the Scottish coast these two fish are appearing on menus in restaurants around the whole country even through I must admit these dingy colored fish are not so appealing to look at as the white cod etc they taste fine.

I would suggest using either a small boat or a long pole off the rocks but take care the rocks can be slippy. Better described as olive colored fish they can be difficult to tell apart although the saithe does grow in time to be much larger than the lythe fish but with younger ones takes some practice.

You will also find a number of other fish do come fairly close to the shore including cod, dogfish and grey mullet.  If you have sharp eyes you may also see some flat fish in the sandy bays especially dabs, plaice and flounder which are all fairly common in the area.

Perhaps less common but frequently hauled in fish include pipefish, lumpsuckers and the cornish sucker fish.

Good sport for the keen angler.

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The north of the island (above Loch Tarbert) is scarcely populated. Even the road dies out around ten miles short of the headland although an ordinary car can negotiate the first six miles on a unsurfaced track.

For those able to get there perhaps on foot or bicycle you could see the Gulf of Corryvreckan lying between Jura and Scarba. This stretch of water is still shown on the British Royal Navy maps as being unnavigable due to a very strong Whirlpool well worth the site if you catch the tides right. George Orwell the writer of the book 1984 (written whilst living on Isle of Jura) nearly lost his life when on a fishing trip in these waters. (Incidentally Orwell used his real name Eric Blair and is still remembered by a number of people living on the Isle of Jura today.)

The present population of the isle is under 200 people with the largest population living in Craighouse on the east coast of the island. This village contains the church, the only shop and the Isle of Jura Scotch Whisky Distillery along with the Jura Hotel where Lairds and Ladies of Jura can claim a discount on their accommodation.

Jura is a very rugged island almost all of it being open moorland and peat bog with more recent conifer plantations. The most dominant scenery is of course the three Paps of Jura each having rounded peaks of over 700 metres high and can be seen no matter which way you approach the isle. (Each year there is an annual race to run all three peaks which several hundred taking part.)

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Americans traveling in Scotland by car need to ask a local Scotsman for an ETA. Reading a map and using USA experience to estimate how long it will take you to get from Point A to Point B is a surefire recipe for arriving at Castle —- a whopping 40 minutes before closing time. I should know, as hubby and I stubbornly hung onto our Yank methodology for longer than I’m going to admit before we finally humbled ourselves and just asked.

Before our first trip in 1999, we did our homework – or so we thought. “Whoohoo! It’s about the size of my home state – Indiana,” I yelled from my seat at the computer. Yanks will know Indiana ranks as one of the smallest (38^th) of the States. I remembered how quickly my family could get around in my flat-farmland home state, so traveling to just about anyplace in Scotland should be a quick trip, I reasoned.

Wrong. So very wrong. Scots who are reading this are LOL. Yanks who have traveled in Scotland are doing the same. If you’re neither of these, but planning on traveling to Scotland soon – or later – here’s some free advice: ask a local.

Much of Scotland’s 30,420 square mileage is taken up by the wild and wooly Highlands, where the Highland Clearances decimated the population in the late 1700s (shortly after the Battle of Culloden). Mountainous, with such a disproportionately small percentage of the country’s population, this area has no need for lots of four-lane highways. Getting to tourist sites in this area is a round-about effort, at best. Let me be quick to say that anything you see will be worth the effort; it just may take a little more effort and considerably more time than you thought!

Very few major (depending on what you call major) industries have sprung up in the Highlands since The Clearances, so the majority of Scots have worked and lived in the central area around Glasgow and Edinburgh. This area, as well as the Borders (the area between the Edinburgh-Glasgow belt and England’s northern border), is the prime tourist area simply because this is where most of the Scottish civilization has been crammed for so long. There’s a lot to see. You could spend weeks in this area and never see it all.

High Street (A73) in Lanark (SE of Edinburgh in South Lanarkshire)

One village is just three or four miles from the next, often connected by A or B roads. You travel 45-50 mph for three minutes, slow down to 30 mph to go through one village, travel 45-50 mph for five minutes, slow down to 30 mph for the next village, and so on. If you’re from the East Coast, you’re thinking, “And your point would be . . . ?” If you’re from the American Midwest – where things are a bit more spread out – you’ve already figured out that you’re in trouble. The way you’re accustomed to computing travel time (according to distance) just won’t work for most of Scotland.

Scotland does have dual carriageways (its version of our interstate highways), but not many. Chances are, the places you want to see will involve a short time on a dual carriageway and a lot of time on an A or B road (described above). 

Bottom line: ask a local how long it takes. Don’t even try to work it out yourself.

Technorati Tags: traveling in scotland, travelling in Scotland