The Scottish Government grades its salmon Moderate (Grade 2) for 2026: catch and release is strongly encouraged, and every salmon caught before 1 April must be released by law. In the years between the wars and for two decades after, anglers came to the Loch Maree Hotel and fished from boats and hired ghillies and caught sea trout in numbers that now seem impossible — and were, eventually, proven to be unsustainable. The collapse came in the 1980s with the arrival of salmon farms in the sea lochs of Wester Ross, and the sea trout runs that had built the loch's reputation were broken within a single generation. What remains is a great wild Highland loch, still beautiful, still holding brown trout and the occasional sea trout and the odd salmon that runs the short River Ewe below. The setting is among the finest in Scotland — Slioch and the Torridon peaks rising out of the water on every side, the islands in the centre with their Caledonian pine. Fish it with respect for what was lost and gratitude for what remains. Boats and permits through the Loch Maree Hotel and Wester Ross Fisheries Trust. Mandatory catch-and-release for sea trout throughout. Granite-based upland geology shapes this river.

• Loch
• Granite

• Ecology: Good
• Chemical: Unknown