THE GRIMERSTA 313 



" As I have said, the lodge stands on the seaside some mile and a 

 half down the fjord into which the river flows, the fjord opposite the 

 house not being more than half a mile broad. The strength of the 

 tide there runs very strongly on the side opposite to the house. It 

 was a curious thing to notice how at every tide the shoals of fish fol- 

 lowed the current, jumping regularly at just the same places at the 

 same stages of the tide as it flowed and ebbed. This gave me a very 

 good insight of what must happen when fixed nets are set along a 

 coast line, for the salmon seemed to play up and down the tideway 

 for many days, even when the river was quite passable to them. Owing 

 to low water the river was impassable, and this daily promenade of 

 the shoals of salmon and sea-trout was much more remarkable. Just 

 outside the river mouth was a round sort of basin, and it was round 

 and round this that the fish seemed most to congregate at high tide, 

 showing their back fins as they swam round. 



" Though the fish swarmed here, and though I tried for them with 

 all sorts of baits, as well as with the fly, I never caught a salmon in 

 salt water there fairly, and but a few sea-trout. When we wanted 

 any for the house it was a simple matter to get them there, for one 

 only had to wait for a shoal to come by, cast over them with a big 

 weighted fly, and snatch into one. The fish staying so long in the 

 estuary after they were ready to run into fresh water, seemed to sicken, 

 and many got large white patches on their sides and heads ; but 

 directly they got into fresh water this disease left them. Some were 

 so badly diseased that we used to find a good many left dead on the 

 rocks at low tide. 



" The party, five rods, of which I was one, had the fishing for the 

 month of August, and things got more and more hopeless as time 

 went on. So bad, indeed, that two of the party left before the end 

 of the month. From the formation of the lochs, it struck us that an 

 artificial spate might be made by cutting away the river bed and letting 

 down water from one of the upper lakes. We explored all the likely 

 places, and at last hit upon the lower end of Loch Langabhat as being 

 a suitable place for the work. This was easier to do than it sounds, 

 as some years before a hatchway had been made there, with a grating 

 to keep the fish from running into Loch Langabhat. Unfortunately, 

 this useful work had gone to ruin, but it was easy to grub up the bed 

 of the stream where the grating had been, and so let down nearly 2 feet 

 of the big lake, which is 10 miles long by J to 1 mile across. 

 At the bottom of our first loch, i.e. the one nearest the sea, we then 

 made a dam across the river head, some 6 feet high, as solidly as we 

 could with rocks and turves. All this was rather against the opinion 

 of the gillies, who declared that no salmon would run up except in 

 water fresh from the sky. As the water gradually worked down through 

 the chain of lochs it filled up this lower lake to the top of the dam. 

 But this took a long time, nearly a week. When at last this was 

 accomplished we were ready to cut the dam, and, as it was some 

 1 miles from the sea, we reckoned (as it proved, correctly) 



