Looking back over the 2011 season from a currently snow-filled December landscape revels yet again an essential truth for success in fishing: being in the right place at the right time. Your correspondent never graced that magical space at the right time this year, although he constantly endeavoured to do so; the long winter, late spring and the dog days of summer and foaming autumn floods defeated him.

Nevertheless, although final 2011 catch figures have yet to be completed, it seems as though the season past might continue the encouraging upward trend is numbers of salmonids returning to our north, east and south west coast streams. The big four, Tweed, Tay, Dee and Spey appear to have had good sport and catch-and-release has, again, been a major factor in the anglers’ contribution to environmental responsibility.

Also, as in line with recent years, the number of salmon being caught in the 20lb/40lb range shows no sign of diminishing; fish of 28lb and over 30lb have been taken, as well a splendid sea trout from Tweed weighing 14lb. Our Highland rivers have also produced excellent results, with some systems reporting weekly catches of more than 100/200 fish; the Thurso, after a record-breaking season in 2010 is now probably the most productive salmon stream along the north coast. Even the Wick River in Caithness, a classic little spate stream, looks likely to be again, as it was last season, near the 1,000 fish mark.

The real jewel for me, however, is and always has been the wealth of wild brown trout fishing to be found in the hills and moorlands of the far north and in that connection the 2011 season was no exception. Some wonderful brown trout were caught, fish of up to and over 7lb in weight, many of them taken from small, insignificant looking lochs and lochans that most anglers might think not worth pausing to have a cast.

Through the cold, wild and wet months that lie between us and the new season, these thoughts sustain me – and the fact that I know to an inch were many of these leviathan's live.