78 LOCH SALMON -FISHING. 



to end, you kill most heavy fish with ; and yet 

 there are many whole days in the same year 

 when that fly will be rejected for another very 

 unlike it. Neither is it a necessary consequence 

 that the most killing fly of one year should be 

 also the most successful of the next. On the 

 contrary, I have experienced a complete change 

 in the favoured fly of the season, not only in 

 lochs, but in rivers. 



The most deadly fly of the river Falloch altered 

 every season of the three years I rented it ; and 

 although a large minnow was eagerly dashed at, 

 both by white trout and heavy- loch ones which 

 ascended from Loch Lomond, yet I invariably 

 fixed all the largest sea-trout with fly and the 

 lightest tackle I dared risk. A grilse-rod and the 

 finest gut made a Falloch trout of from 4 to 7 

 pounds a good substitute for a 15 or 20-pound 

 salmon with ordinary tackle. The best Falloch 

 run I had was with a 4^-pounder hooked by the 

 belly fin. I had almost to swim before landing 

 him.* 



* In the autumn of 1863, my last season on the Falloch, I 

 landed twenty trout of an aggregate weight of sixty pounds. 



