End of the season, another year gone. Now is the time of mists and mellow fruitfulness, again, and it seems to come round quicker with every passing year. Still, we have our memories of the ones that got away and ones that didn’t, or as was the case for me during 2011, more of the former and much, much less of the other.

My enduring memory of my three days salmon fishing this year on the River Borgie, is of a stream full of sparkling fish that refused all I offered: in front of them, behind them, a bit up stream, a bit to the left, a bit to the right, big flies, small flies, even smaller flies, red, black, yellow, silver and blue flies, all to no avail.

And then there was the ‘time factor’ … there just never seemed to be enough of it. I blame the government. When I was a boy/youth there was always plenty of time, loads of it. Now, where has it gone? Who has stolen my time? Of course there can be only one culprit and that has to be that incompetent bunch of miscreants down at the fit o' the mile on Auld Reekie and the other bunch in Westminster.

But one happy memory I have, of post-sauna fishing in Finland; the Manager and I spent time there with the Finnish branch of Clan Sandison in July, on a small island in the middle of a vast lake – they have even more of them in Finland, large and small than even we have here in Scotland.

I didn’t catch anything, but, believe me, it was quite wonderful.