POACHING 161 



Tweed and its tributaries, although paraffin is sub- 

 stituted for the tar barrel and ' heather lichts,'and the 

 1 cleik ' or gaff for the leister. Many of the fish which 

 go up to the spawning beds never return ; and the 

 gangs who go out to ' burn the water ' are too often 

 prepared to use violence, and bailiffs and poachers 

 have met their death, like Grimes in the 'Water 

 Babies,' in the fierce encounters that have taken place. 

 Whether from hereditary instinct or traditional in- 

 struction, the sympathies of the Lowlander are rather 

 with the poacher than the water bailiff, and the 

 wanton destruction of fish is not easily punished or 

 prevented. 



Nets of various kinds are used for poaching as 

 well as for legal fishing, in and out of season : splash 

 nets, which entangle the fish when they strike them ; 

 shove nets to take them under the banks or rocks ; 

 nets to catch them at the salmon leaps, and fine seines 

 to drag the pools at night from the bank, or a light 

 boat or coracle, often managed by a single skilful 

 hand. A poacher resident at Crinan was more than 

 once caught at night taking salmon in this manner 

 up the river Add, and his boat was for some time up at 

 the keeper's house at Poltalloch— a flat-bottomed skiff 

 with outriggers, rather like a duck shooter's punt ; 

 but although it certainly was never used for any 



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