CHAPTER ONE HIGHLAND LAKES 



Many a Highland lake has a legend attached to it, and 

 however improbable the tale may seem to the incredulous 

 Sassenach, the Highlander believes firmly in the truth of 

 it. 



Some person, endowed doubtless with a prominent or- 

 gan of destructiveness, has within the last few years in- 4^ 

 vented an implement for fishing the lakes, called the otter; 

 and though it is rather a poaching sort of affair, still I con- 

 sider it quite a fair way of catching trout in some of the 

 mountain lochs, where a rod could be used to no good 

 effect, and where it would be impossible to launch a boat. 

 Its principle of motion is exactly similar to that of a boy's 

 kite. Acted upon by the resistance of the water, the otter, 

 which consists of a small thin board, about fourteen inches 

 by eight, and leaded on one edge so as to swim nearly up- 

 right, carries out a long line, which is attached to it by four 

 short strings, and is wound on a large reel. To this line are 

 fastened a dozen flies on short lines, which, being carried 

 along by the board, rake the surface of the water; and in 

 windy weather I have caught numbers of trout in this way, 

 where the rod would have been of no use whatever.* 



Many a grilse, and salmon too, have I killed in Loch 

 Ness with the otter. There are, however, some great draw- 

 backs to the merits of this implement. The fish are very 

 apt to escape after being struck by the hooks, and, being 



* The (!//i?;- is now an illegal instrument of capture, and rightly so, as St John himself 

 would have been among the first to admit, had he lived at the present day, when mod- 

 ern modes of travel render access easy to regions barely accessilileof yore, and enable 

 poachers to deliver fish rapidly to the market. Moreover, the otter, besides being a lazy 

 means of filling a basket, is very injurious to the fishery where it is used, by reason of 

 the large proportion of trout which are hooked and lost, thereby impairing the fair fly- 

 fisher's prospect of sport. — Ed. 



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