That last fish was the largest one I gillied in my time at Bolstad, and with that, I think I will bring this thread to a close. I do have pictures of a few more 40lbers, but they're not particularly interesting. Thank you to everyone who has kept this going - it's been a happy trip down memory lane for me, and I'm glad that some of you have found it enjoyable too. A few final thoughts:
Those of you who have been following and playing along for the past 11 weeks will perhaps have noticed that there wasn't a 50lb fish among them. Rather surprisingly, in the years 1984-89 there wasn't a 50lb fish landed from Bolstad. There would usually have been one every couple of years at least, and of course there were fish lost in those years that were estimated by experienced gillies as being in the 50lb bracket. The nearest to that magic figure was Terry Goulding's 49 1/2lber which he caught on fly on 1st June 1989, and which was chronicled both in Trout and Salmon and also Buller's Domesday Book.
As well as hopefully providing a bit of a distraction while we have been locked down, one of the reasons for my starting this thread originally was to look at how pictures can sometimes be deceptive, and there have been a few where the average of all guesses has been up to 20% out - both over and under - particularly the ones that I chose early on in the process because I thought they did either make a fish look big or small. So pictures can certainly be deceptive at times. But on the whole, and particularly as people got their eyes in (after all, most of us are unlikely to have seen a fish of this calibre so won't have much in the way of a benchmark), I think the accuracy of the collective wisdom of the forum has mostly been impressive.
Rather boringly, when in the past I have posted pictures here I have subsequently found that they have been nicked by others for use elsewhere. So for the avoidance of doubt, all the images posted by me on this thread to date are Copyright © Charles Harman 2020 and must not not be reproduced without permission.
I will leave you with one last fish - for a bit of devilment ??. Unlike the fish I have posted, which were all killed and weighed, this one was returned without being weighed so we cannot know for certain - though we do know what was claimed for it!
Having now seen quite a lot of pictures of large fish with verified weights and got your collective eyes in, I wonder whether the collective wisdom of the forum might like to revisit the so-called Beast of Boleside and give an opinion of its weight?
Please see:
Salmon angler Shamus Jennings has rocked the world of fly fishing by landing the biggest salmon of 2013. The huge fish caught at Boleside Beat on the Tweed in the Scottish Borders, was
blog.fishtweed.co.uk