West Lothian is located on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, Scotland
The county of West Lothian offers numerous angling opportunities upon purchase of a day ticket, permit or by becoming a member of a local angling club. There are a number of commercial stillwater fisheries that are stocked with Rainbow, Blue, Brown, Tigers and Golden trout. Anglers also have the choice of casting a fly or worm in one of the beautiful lochs, home to wild brown and ferox trout and pike.
The majority of the fishing in the area is for Salmon, Rainbow, Blue, Brown and Ferrox trout with many waters offering the angler fly and bait fishing. Some reservoirs in the county are ideal for coarse angler and are stocked with species including carp, roach, rudd, bream, tench. pike and perch.
The modern council area borders, in a clockwise direction, the council areas of Edinburgh, the Scottish Borders, North and South Lanarkshire, and Falkirk. The traditional county bordered Midlothian to the south-east, Lanarkshire to the south-west and Stirlingshire to the west. Its border with Midlothian was formed by the Briech Water, from its source until it reached the Almond, and it then followed the Almond to the Firth of Forth (except by Livingston, where Midlothian intruded about a mile past the Almond to include the hamlets of Howden, Craigshill, and Pumpherston). The western border was formed first by the Drumtassie Burn and then by the Avon. It had an area of 120 sq. miles (310 km2), making it the third smallest of Scotland's 33 counties and smaller than the modern council area.
The geology of West Lothian is typical for the Midland valley area geological of Scotland. Most of the bedrock surface area is underlaid by Carboniferous sedimentary rocks running in strips from north to south, with a variety of glacial deposits. The exception is the Bathgate Hills, which are composed of volcanic rocks to the north of Bathgate and around Linlithgow. Other rock types include oil shale, sandstone, dolerite. The eastern and southern rocks are the oldest, specifically Devonian sandstones and volcanic rocks in the Pentland Hills. In the middle of the county there is a large field of shale oil running south to north (underneath the settlements of Broxburn, Livingston and West Calder), then sedimentary and basalt rocks, which supply silica sand. In the far west of the county, a large carboniferous coalfield exists; it extends underneath Whitburn, Blackridge and Harthill. The oil shale in West Lothian is an organic-rich, fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons can be extracted. This extraction was carried out extensively in the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by a process developed by the chemist James Young.
