CHAPTER V 



THE DEE 



ANGLING SEASON : llth February to 31st October. 

 NETTING SEASON : llth February to 26th August. 



District Fishery Board meets in Aberdeen. 



There is no river in Scotland which offers such an extent of 

 first-class angling water as the Dee. If the Tweed were 

 unobstructed by nets, weirs, and pollutions, it would offer 

 perhaps an even greater amount, but the beautiful reaches of 

 Tweed above Peebles scarcely hold a fish till " the back end," 

 while the corresponding section of the Dee offers the cream of 

 fishing from late spring onwards. The Dee also has a general 

 character throughout its whole course which is not found in 

 many rivers. The Helmsdale is perhaps the nearest in 

 character, but it is only a fourth of the length. 



The Dee rises from two little streams which drain the slopes 

 of Braeriach in the Cairngorms. The Garrachorry Burn, 

 which hurries down the deep cleft between Braeriach and 

 Cairn Toul from the so-called Dee Well, may be considered 

 the highest head-stream. A more romantic spot for the birth 

 of the grand river could not well be imagined. The mountain 

 masses rise steep and magnificent ; Cairn Toul conical with a 

 great crater-like hollow gouged out of its side, where a little 

 tarn reflects the ridges above, and where deer are frequently to 

 be seen feeding round the juicy margin ; Braeriach, the proto- 

 type of its opposite neighbour Benmacdhui, impressive in great 

 mass and solidity. Dee Well is 4,060 feet above sea-level, and 

 therefore more than 1,300 feet above the stream which drains 

 the eastern side of the Larig the high pass through the 

 mountains from Strathspey. Here there are two or three 

 pools, usually bluish and snow-fed in appearance, named also 

 the Wells of Dee. How trout came to be there, and how they 



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