James “Jim” Murray is an artist, actor and an activist for river conservation: he founded Activist Anglers in 2023. A keen fly-fisherman, through the sport Murray has been alerted to the plight of the wild Atlantic salmon, whose numbers are diminishing. His latest series of work is called Creatures of Light and consists of canvases he painted and then submerged in the salmon spawning grounds of famous salmon-fishing rivers. Once retrieved, he continued to work on these to create abstract paintings. One, however, bears the clear depiction of an angler’s fly and, here, he tells us which river that canvas was sunk in and the story behind the image. As an aside, if Jim looks familiar, it might be because you saw him play Prince Andrew in The Crown.
I have been salmon fishing for 15 years now and have been going up to Scotland for some 20. For salmon fishermen, the “Big Four” rivers are the Tay, the Spey, the Dee and the Tweed. I’ve fished a lot on them, and they truly are iconic. But you get to a point where you need to broaden your horizons.
Because of my profile as an advocate for the conservation of salmon, and an activist for the protection of the rivers that are their home, I get asked to open a lot of rivers. There are ceremonial dates at the start of the fly-fishing season in Scotland where people bless the river. This is what I do – you get piped by pipers down to the riverbank and then throw whisky into the river to bless it for the season.
About eight years back, I was invited to open the River Deveron: a little river, as well known for trout fishing as salmon fishing.
I went up to conduct the blessing. It’s one of the prettiest rivers I’ve ever fished. It’s surrounded by deep arable land, in the heart of a farming community in Aberdeenshire. It has consistent salmon stock and the community is so welcoming. The people on the Deveron understand that the community should give back to the river, to acknowledge what the river gives to them.
A hundred years ago, there was a diminutive woman who lived on the river named Clementina Morison. Her nickname was “Tiny” Morison. She flung her fly into the Deveron on October 21, 1924, and managed to haul out what is today still the biggest-ever UK fly-caught salmon – at 61 pounds.
This piqued my interest, so I thought I must fish the river and help them get some publicity. Now, I have made films about the Deveron and the community has given the whole river over to the Atlantic Salmon Trust. This is a science and research-based NGO trying to save the wild Atlantic salmon.
As part of my art project Creatures of Light (named after a line in a Ted Hughes poem where he describes salmon this way), I sunk canvasses in various salmon rivers around the country for several months. Of course, I put one in each of the Big Four, but I also thought of the Deveron as this is a special river. And because of the story of Tiny Morison, people come from around the world to fish it.
While the other canvases I left submerged in the salmon breeding grounds were all about colour and form – I painted on them before leaving them for months underwater, and then worked on them again when I retrieved them – the one that I put in the Deveron has a representation of the fly that Tiny Morison used: the “Brown Wing Killer” – a handcrafted creation.
I sunk the canvas with a painting of the fly on it for two months during spawning season. It emerged distressed, and all I had to do was bring back the fly a little bit. It’s the only piece out of the whole series that is figurative. That canvas sold within a week to Tiny Morison’s great, great grandson and he’s hanging it in the family house in Aberdeenshire. The Brown Wing Killer has gone back to its rightful owner.
I hope that my work will draw attention to the plight of the wild Atlantic salmon. Their numbers are now the lowest on record. We really need to get support for conservation of these fish and the rivers they live in.
Anglers are becoming much more pro conservation, which is great news. Rivers survive through fishing. But the numbers of salmon are diminishing. The problem is that they live out at sea as well as in the river. They stay in a river for a year or two, then they follow migrating paths to Greenland and Norway and then come back.
Something is happening out at sea that means the trajectory of returning salmon is in decline. We think global warming may be playing its part – salmon are cold blooded, and their food sources may be affected by climate change. But then there are also super-trawlers that catch them by mistake.
The one thing we can control is the freshwater environment of our rivers and that is where my efforts are focused. A percentage of the sales of my Creatures of Light project is going towards the Atlantic Salmon Trust to help its work. We can stop pollution and rewild the upper reaches of the rivers by planting trees to cool the water down and provide shelter.
I want to turn every salmon river into a salmon factory – sending healthy juvenile salmon out to sea to mitigate the declining return numbers. All salmon need is cold, clean water.
In the meantime, I would implore anyone to go and stand in the Deveron any time between March and October, and marvel.
Jim is an ambassador for Bremont watches, which sponsored the exhibition for Creatures of Light at the Royal Watercolour Society in London. You can follow Jim on Instagram at @thejimmurray
Interview by Peter Howarth, managing director of Secret Trips
