186 Brown Trout 
When a farmer rents a piece of land for grazing he knows how 
many sheep or cattle it will pasture, and that if he put on more than 
the proper number they will not grow. He also knows that if he 
introduce too few they will become fat and too lazy to eat up all 
the pasture, and he will thus lose part of the money paid for the 
pastureland. If the proprietor or the tenant of a loch would consider 
the matter in the same way as the farmer, he would obtain full value 
out of his lochs, be saved a deal of grumbling, and find life more 
pleasant. 
For years ] have had the management of several lochs, and 

Fic, 184.—16-lb. Loch Rannoch Trout. May 1903. 
when the trout grow too large and do not rise I introduce more trout, 
and soon the large ones begin to rise more freely. If, on the other 
hand, the trout are too small, I net them or deprive them of part 
of the spawning-ground. In constructing new lochs one should 
endeavour to have as much shallow water as possible, but not shallow 
enough to allow weeds to grow in it. The best depth is from 5 to 
9 feet; beyond 12 feet food becomes scarce, and trout do not rise 
well in deep water. Attention to those matters will ensure the 
success of a loch and save much unnecessary expense. 
The nature of the feeding has such an effect on the appearance of 
trout that no two lochs or streams in Great Britain contain trout which 
are exactly similar. My experience of hundreds of lochs and rivers 
