Indeed, the series finds Hall - flanked, in a loch-based boat, by equally irascible comic Mike Wilmot - reeling in a bumper shoal of tetchy topics, which, depending on the meatiness of their comedic/political content, are either rapidly tossed back into the Highland water or devoured with lashings of bile and brio.
In 1785, a Loch Fyne fisherman told a visiting MP that it was not unusual to catch 350 turbot, sole and "large, fine flounders" on just one long line of 400 hooks.
These days he needs to be embroiled in the Middle East peace process like a loch in kop, Yiddish for "hole in the head", wrote Chemi Shalev, Washington correspondent of Haaretz, Israel's main liberal newspaper.
Crannock lives by a loch in a remote part of Scotland, believes it's too late to do anything, and has no interest in recycling, insulating his home or getting "a bag for life".
Meanwhile I was sitting at the bottom, in the sun, by a loch and failing (as usual) to see any otters, although their footprints were clear in the sand, along with deer, fox and sheep.
The Foes inhabit a large and lonely house by a loch, in the wilds of Scotland, and the isolation chimes with Hallam's mood; he crouches in a tree house on the grounds and daubs his face with makeup as if it were war paint.
And Groff gives life to a Loch Nessian monster in a glacial lake in the Hudson River Valley.
I attempt to fly-fish in a remote loch with water the colour of black tea, catching nothing.
Its status as a nuclear power would be doubtful: the country's nuclear submarines are based in a Scottish loch and could not be moved quickly.
We had more langoustines (caught in creels, metal-framed baskets woven through with nylon rope, in a nearby loch), grilled and served halved with a simple garlic and herb butter.
