The Muick is a small acidic river of Royal Deeside, tumbling down off the high ground past Lochnagar to join the Dee, and it's the kind of intimate hill stream that gets overlooked in favour of the great salmon river it feeds. That's a pity, because it's a lovely bit of wild trout water — fast, peat-tinged, pocketed with runs and pools, holding small, dark, hard-fighting browns that have never seen a stocked fish in their lives. You fish it the way you fish any little spate stream: short casts, quick reactions, a fly fished in the pockets behind the rocks and in the seams. Nothing here is large, but everything is genuine, and the surroundings are about as good as it gets.

• River
• Acidic