CHAPTER III 

 TAY DISTRICT 



RIVERS: TAY, TUMMEL, GARRY, TILT, LYON, ISLA, 



ALMOND, EARN. 

 LOCHS: TAY, TUMMEL, RANNOCH, GARRY, EARN. 



ANGLING SEASON : January 15th to October 15th. 

 NETTING SEASON : February 5th to August 20th. 



(For special fishing seasons of Earn see under that river.) 

 District Fishery Board sits in Perth. 



There is a certain amount of rivalry between the Tay, the 

 Dee, and the Tweed as to which is the greatest or most 

 important salmon river in Scotland, or it may be, in Britain. 

 I have been blamed for describing the Tay as the premier 

 river of Scotland, so I will not make the statement again. 

 I confess to a feeling of diffidence in commencing to write 

 of the river at all ; it is such a big thing. I suppose our 

 American cousins, who are accustomed to big things, would 

 regard the river as a mere brook. It is over a hundred miles 

 long. The Spey, by the way, is the same length. On the 

 authority of Sir Archibald Geikie, however, the Tay has the 

 greatest volume of water in Great Britain. I leave Londoners 

 to make the best of that statement. The drainage area is 

 nearly 2,000 square miles. 1 The Fillan Water is the real 

 source of the Tay. It rises from a high corrie on Ben Laoigh 

 on the borders of Argyllshire, and at an elevation of about 

 3,000 feet. This corrie forms the upper end of a highly eroded 

 basin of great extent, and touches the main water parting of 

 the country. An idea of the extent of erosion may be obtained 

 when it is realised that, from its high source, the Fillan has in 



1 The Geology and Scenery of the Grampians. Peter Macnair, F. R. S. E. , 

 F.G.S. Vol. i., p. 69. MacLehose & Sons, Glasgow, 1908. 



54 



