SALMON FISHING 103 



The Awe, indeed, annually yields many big fish, both to 

 the net and the rod, and annexed are the weights of some 

 of them, vouched for on unimpeachable authority. Colonel 

 Murray, of Polmaise, writes as follows from 



"Fannans, Taynuilt. 



"July 2>id, 1891.* 



"The fish weighed 42 lbs., a male, and measured 26^ inches 

 in girth, 47^ in length, and was killed in the Bothy Pool, 

 25th July, 1879. A 'Thunder and Lightning' took his 

 fancy, and I had him out in about ten minutes, and before 

 he was nearly done. The next in size that I have killed in 

 the Awe was 38 lbs. There was a large salmo ferox hooked 

 by Mr. Mure in the top pool of the Awe, and killed in the 

 loch some way up the Pass of Brander, which weighed 

 39^ lbs., and this I should think the heaviest ferox ever 

 killed, certainly with the fly. 



" I may mention a curious case of a fly I had, which 

 killed eleven salmon in two days, and was lost in the twelfth 

 fish, on the third day, which went over a fall in the Conon 

 and cut the line. Two other anglers were fishing the river 

 at the same time and never got a fish, and I could not kill 

 another after losing the fly, although I had several of the 

 same pattern dressed by the same man at the same time 

 that the killer was tied. Was this some chance, or some 

 combination of colour ? " 



Mr. Thorpe, of Ardbrecknish, who for many years rented 

 the Inverawe water, also writes to me he got one in his cruive 

 that weighed 52 lbs., but that he has never got one with the 

 rod that was quite 40 lbs., though several times close to it. Sir 

 John Bennett Lawes, who for many seasons rented the upper 

 water of the Awe, which at present Lord Breadalbane keeps 



* Since this date the Colonel has had se\eral fish of heavier weight. See A«e 

 in Vol. I. of my Salmon Rivers of Scotland. 



