96 SHOOTING AND SALMON FISHING 



and that owing to changes in the bed of the river, caused by 

 heavy floods, the very one which ten years ago was the best of 

 all may now be occupied by a thriving colony of rabbits.* 



In writing of a good fishery, we mean one which shows a 

 fine average for many years past, for it is impossible to insure 

 a uniform good take, and all anglers will be able to recall cases 

 of large rents being paid for fishings yielding next to nothing, 

 though for many previous seasons the catch has been large and 

 renowned. Our idea of a good fishery is that each rod on it 

 should get from fifty to a hundred fish during the two months 

 of the best season, and any piece of water showing this amount 

 of sport before the middle of July is worth twice as much as 

 one offering the like attractions in autumn. 



In writing of a downright bad fishery, we mean one that 

 has had ten fresh tenants in as many years, and in which 

 the two best months have averaged fifteen fish a rod, while 

 the rent asked has been from a hundred to two hundred 

 pounds. Of this sort there are always some in the market, 

 and nothing will ever deter rash anglers from taking them ; so 

 that it appears to be useless to repeat the worn-out caution of 

 advising fishermen never to rent any water from which they 

 cannot get a return of the sport had on it for several years. 



The weekly reports published by many of the Scotch daily 

 papers, and by the Field and Land and Water, are generally 

 very correct, although, personally, we are not much in favour 

 of them, as it has ever seemed to us rather absurd one cannot 

 kill a stag, or a few brace of grouse, or a salmon, without 

 the same being duly chronicled in print. In the Field we 

 have read of eighteen salmon in a day being credited to 

 a gentleman who had killed but one eighteen-pounder, and 

 though the matter was probably a printer's error, or the mis- 

 take of a telegraph clerk, which was promptly put right in the 

 issue of the following week, there may yet be plenty of anglers 

 who read of the capture of eighteen, but who did not see the 



* This was actually the case in a fishing once rented by the author. 



