I don’t think of myself as a cruel person. Maybe when I was younger I did some cruel things. You know, mostly saying the most painful thing at the best time to hurt the one you love the most. I tried to get over that. Of course, it’s easy to be kind once they leave and you’re alone. Anyway, I thought I was past all that, but recently I did the very cruelest thing.

Scone, Scotland may not be the epicenter of the flyfishing world; but this morning, it feels like it. A hundred thirty miles north, the River Spey runs past the Gordon Estate where in the mid-1800s, the spey cast was born. Twenty miles south sits Loch Leven where – just a generation later – brown trout eggs were gathered and sent to America to build a wild population. And, beneath the rising fog before me slide the waters of the River Tay—from which in 1922, Georgina Ballantine hauled a 64-pound salmon that stands as the record in the British Isles. The clock strikes 9 a.m.