CHAPTER ONE HIGHLAND LAKES 



not hungry, and you will not catch one; but as soon as they 

 begin to feed, a fish, although he may have half a dozen 

 small trout in his stomach, will still run at your bait. The 

 weight of sinkers on your line, and the depth at which you 

 fish, must of course depend on the depth of water in the 

 lake. A patient fisherman should find out how deep every 

 reach and bay of the lake is before he begins to troll. The 

 labour of a day spent in taking soundings is well repaid. 

 The strength and activity of the large loch trout is im- 

 mense, and he will run out your whole reel-line if allowed 

 to do so. Sometimes he will go down perpendicularly to 

 the bottom, where he remains sulky or attempts to rub off 

 the hooks: get him out of this situation, and away he goes, 

 almost towing your boat after him. Then is the time for 

 your boatman to make play to keep up with the fish and 

 save your line; for a twenty-pound Salmo ferox is no ig- 

 noble foe to contend with when you have him at the end 

 of a common fishing-line: he appears to have the strength 

 of a whale as he rushes away. 



I was crossing Loch Ness alone one evening with my 

 rod at the stern of the boat, with my trolHng-tackle on it 

 tailing behind. Suddenly it was seized by a large trout, and 

 before I could do anything but take hold of my rod he had 

 run out eighty yards of line, and bent my stiff trolling-rod 

 like a willow, carrying half the rod under water. The loch 

 was too deep for me, and he snapped the line in an instant, 

 the rod and the twenty yards of line which remained jerk- 

 ing back into the air, and sending the water in a shower of 

 spray around. Comparingthe strength of this fish with that 

 of others which I have killed when trolling, he must have 

 II 



