186 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



without taking any root at all. Large trout hooked 

 in the neighbourhood of a bed of this weed make a 

 dash into it, and if the angler is fishing with fly, he 

 may be thankful if he recovers his cast, without much 

 regretting the certain loss of the trout. Fortunately 

 the recurring floods help to repress its extension, and 

 it cannot obtain a footing in the streams. In no other 

 Scotch river that we know of has this annoying in- 

 vader presented itself. 



It is stated that, some thirty or forty years ago, 

 salmon freely entered the Whitadder ; but singularly 

 enough, considering how many must pass its mouth, 

 scarcely a specimen of the grown salar ever ventures 

 into it now. Even in the most plentiful seasons, very 

 few grilse visit it either. Hosts of bull-trouts, how- 

 ever, swarm into it in the spawning - time, and a 

 favourable flood spreads them throughout its waters, 

 almost to its source. A pretty high cauld about a mile 

 from its mouth prevents their getting up if the flood is 

 only a low one, and thus in the dam at Cantie's Bridge 

 many hundreds of them are kept throughout the win- 

 ter. In the old kelt-killing days, when the occupier 

 of the public-house at the bridge leased the fishing in 

 this pool, murderous slaughter used to be committed 

 in it every spring ; but of late years it has been pre- 

 served, and the abortive experiments to ascertain the 

 rate of the kelt's growth, to which we have already 

 referred, have been made here. 



