CHAPTER II. 



Having reference to the Solway Fishery Loch Kinder and its trout Loch 

 Leven trout An anglers paradise Poachers Nature's motive power. 



" A N angler's paradise ! " Three words that are at once sug- 

 gestive to the lover of the rod of a wonderfully pleasing 

 sensation. And such were the words that escaped the lips of one 

 of the pleasantest and most agreeable anglers who ever visited the 

 Solway Fishery. It came about in this way. I had been down 

 the coast yachting for a few days, studying some of the denizens 

 of the deep sea with a view to their cultivation, and on my return 

 found a card had been left by a visitor who had called to see my 

 fish ponds, and who was described to me as taking great interest 

 in the work, and who, after seeing part of what was to be seen 

 had exclaimed, " What an angler's paradise !" 



It struck me as being a most refined and appropriate ex- 

 pression, in few words, of the feelings of one who afterwards proved 

 himself to be one of the best anglers I had ever come across. He 

 always caught fish, and what was more, he got them when nobody 

 else could catch them, and in the most skilful and sportsmanlike 

 manner. On loch or stream it was the same. One day I lent 

 him my boat on a loch where other people seemed to have only 

 indifferent success, and he soon captured over forty pounds of 

 pike and perch, some of the latter being about three pounds in 

 weight. 



It is rather amusing to note the exclamations of visitors on 

 being shown round my fish ponds, expressive possibly of pretty 

 much the same kind of feeling, but certainly varying a good deal 

 in phraseology. My friend to whom I have just referred gave 

 vent to his feelings once and for all in three very expressive words. 

 Another interested party kept on continually uttering the words 



