Castle Forbes Estate

Rising in the Cairngorm National Park and flowing 135 km east, entering the sea at Aberdeen, the Don is Scotland's 6th largest river, draining a catchment of more than 1,312 sq km.

Home to a range of freshwater species, which include salmon, sea trout, eels, and lamprey, the river is perhaps most well known for its specimen brown trout.

Halfway between the source of the river and its mouth, almost 6.5 kilometres of double bank fishing, east of the village of Alford with majestic Bennachie as a backdrop, can provide excellent sport from February until the end of October.

The main beats at Castle Forbes are divided by the spectacular 101 ft span of Keig Bridge, which was designed by the noted Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford in the early nineteenth century.

Once known as one of Scotland's premier rivers for brown trout, an active Salmon Fishery Board has, over many years, encouraged increasingly prolific runs of salmon and sea trout in favourable conditions, with a policy of controlling pollution and demolishing obstacles that had previously discouraged migratory fish from reaching their spawning grounds.