i yo FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 



of the gourmet. The vivid tinges of colouring range 

 from delicate pink, through blushing carmine, to 

 flaming rose-colour. No need to seek the flavouring 

 in the cruets vide Mrs. Poyser. Serve simply, like 

 crimped and curdy salmon, in the water in which the 

 fish has been boiled ; add at the utmost a touch of 

 vinegar, and possibly the faintest soupfon of ketchup, 

 to elicit without stifling the native essences. Nor is it 

 the mere reminiscences of gourmandise that warm the 

 imagination in recalling the simple but exquisite ban- 

 quets at which these trout may have figured. Pink, 

 firm flesh means glorious scenery, and a strength of 

 play out of all proportion to the size. Sometimes you 

 have the strength and the size combined, as in the 

 fierce rush of the salmo ferox of Loch Awe when it 

 pleases the savage tyrant of the waters to come upon 

 the feed, somewhere between the depths and the shal- 

 lows. But then you are prepared for the best or the 

 worst ; the minnow is attached to tackle of unim- 

 peachable strength ; it is a case of " pull devil, pull 

 baker," and science is in some measure in suspension 

 when the prey has been fairly hooked. We talk rather 

 of killing what are pigmies by comparison, but who 

 afford very fair sport nevertheless, and with briefer 

 intervals of wearisome expectation ; pigmies, that is to 

 say, perhaps running on the average from three-quarters 

 of a pound to a couple of pounds. 



For ourselves, we never greatly cared for loch-fish- 

 ing. There is something depressing in being cramped 

 between thwarts and benches, that reminds one of those 



