194 SALMON-FISHING IN SALT WATER. 



From Sir Hyde Parker I learnt that " there are 

 two rocks in the sea, not far from Dunrobin Castle, 

 Sutherlandshire, where salmon take the fly in the 

 strongest salt water. A strong race runs by these 

 rocks, and the salmon take here two hours before 

 low water. A friend of Sir Hyde has been very 

 successful." My friend Medicus, living here, 

 tells me that he knows that at the head of Loch 

 Swin, in Argyleshire (close by the Sound of Jura), 

 which is a pure salt water loch or bay, salmon will 

 take the fly in a breeze during the last half-hour of 

 ebb and the first half-hour of flood tide. He has seen 

 them rise there in very great abundance thirty or 

 forty in five minutes, for one or two hours together. 

 To use his own expression "a Highlander used to hit 

 them off in fine style," once, while Medicus was 

 there, taking fourteen small salmon in an hour. 

 He says the fish come to this station every season, 

 and there remain for four or six weeks, finally 

 going elsewhere : there is only one small fresh- 

 water stream running into this loch, too preci- 

 pitous to allow salmon to get up it. But then 

 again, from the Hon. Richard Hely Hutchinson 

 I receive the following opinion : 



" I am persuaded salmon never take the fly in 

 salt water ; I have heard of men who had heard 

 from others that they did, but I never could yet 

 find any one who had either killed salmon them- 

 selves, or- known any man who, to his certain 



