Bushcraft and survival expert Ray Mears has turned his hand to fishing to open the salmon season in Stirling.
Despite wind and rain as Storm Henry blows in, Mears joined dozens of anglers, local school children and pipers at the official opening ceremony and threw a traditional quaich of single malt into the River Teith in Callander.
The river has flooded in recent weeks and some fishermen sat on benches partly submerged by the water while they cast their lines.
Mears said it was a privilege to be in "wild Scotland".
He added: "Of course, without the rain we wouldn't have these natural rivers and it's a really special year to be here because after all the hard work of Stirling Council we are standing beside a category one river, one of the most fantastic salmon rivers found in Scotland, Britain or the world.
"That's an incredible achievement."
The Teith is publicly owned and managed by Stirling Council with a range of conservation measures in place to protect fish stocks.
Stirling Provost Mike Robbins said: "The turnout for this year's opening was just fantastic once again and shows how popular angling is as a pastime for both residents and visitors in the Stirling area.
"Hopefully, the new measures announced by the fisheries team will bring even more keen anglers to the Teith to enjoy all that the area has to offer."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here