The River North Esk has a catchment of just over 700 km². Its proliferation of tributaries offers a spawning habitat that gives the North Esk an edge over many other Scottish rivers. The West Water, the largest tributary, joins the river at Stracathro and further downstream comes the confluence with the Luther, whence the North Esk takes on medium river status down to the gateway to the river at Kinnaber.

The river enjoys an international reputation for being ‘Scotland’s monitored salmon river’ thanks to the operation since 1981 of the Government’s fish counter at Logie and smolt trap on Kinnaber Lade. Smolt production has remained stable, the spring run is recovering and grilse months rising. May and August are currently the two up and coming months, the season now less reliant on autumn weeks. The catchment is vast and pristine with virtually no afforestation in the headwaters to affect water quality.

Access to spawning is now unimpeded, sufficient for the Fishery Board to discontinue hatchery supplementation. Instead the river has been in Scotland a pioneer in protecting juveniles from predators by use of ‘smolt shepherding’.
The oscillatory swing from spring to autumn runs has lasted now for around 30 years. While the spring run fell away after the 1970’s on Scottish rivers, over the past decade it has been recovering on the North Esk; it became the envy of many other river fishing proprietors who struggled to attract fishermen in the early months of the season when the chance of catching a springer on their water had become slim.

The River North Esk enjoys excellent runs of salmon and some good runs of sea trout. In the 1970’s , 80’s and early 90’s salmon runs on the North Esk were as good as, if not better, than on any other river in Scotland save perhaps the Tweed.

For many years Kinnaber formed a part of the massive portfolio of river salmon fishings and coastal netting stations owned by the salmon fishing company, Joseph Johnston & Sons Ltd. In 1990, when the assets of the company were sold, shareholders were given the opportunity to secure certain fishing assets for themselves.

At the time, a family member with initiative and an intimate knowledge of the River North Esk plumped for what he considered to be the best and most productive stretch of fishing on the river. The new owner then set out to develop the fishing and can take credit for maximising the opportunities on Kinnaber through his scientific approach to river fishing restoration. The durability of the restoration work done a decade or more ago and encouragement of advanced fly fishing methods consequently now place Kinnaber amongst the most sought after fishing destinations in Scotland.

Thanks to its streaminess and good depths,  90% of Kinnaber is salmon fishable and a good half of that even at low summer level when fish build up on this beat which is located just above salt water.  They can be caught readily using low water methods such as hitched fly and dead drift nymphing.

The result is a consistency of catches due to sea liced fish off every tide. Concurrence of certain conditions can also result in bumper one-day catches, like the 62 salmon caught on two successive October days by a Tay ghillie and his brother, the former wholly on fly.