"The Spey is perhaps the very best salmon-angling river in Scotland, but it is not a pleasant river to fish, for two reasons: first, you must use a very strong and long rod, at least twenty feet in length; so that, working this all day, becomes very tiresome; secondly, whoever expects to kill many fish in the Spey must be half amphibious, able to wade up to the middle all day long, for the river is so broad that one cannot, from the shore, throw line long enough to reach it.

The Spey salmon run very large. Many are killed every season, weighing from between twenty pounds to thirty pounds each; and I have know a few killed of the respective weights of fifty pounds. There is no river in Britain where there are such large numbers of salmon killed as in the Spey. I have known fishermen take out of a few pools with nets upwards of 1500 salmon in one day."

Photo above is the Carron Bridge on the upper Spey - look closely at the abutment on left to see the line in the air. Also, check out this quick introduction and see fine pictures of The River Spey