158 ANGLING & ART IN SCOTLAND 



There is no need to go into the relative merits 

 of the wet or dry modes of fishing the fly, which 

 have been so often and so fully discussed else- 

 where, except that I may remark that the dry fly 

 is unsuitable for loch fishing, for the same reason 

 that I find fault with the method of allowing the 

 wet fly to sink in one spot without being moved ; 

 namely, because comparatively little ground is 

 covered. 



I suppose the trout fishing on Loch Awe is not, 

 from all accounts, what it used to be forty years 

 ago ; but, as far as my experience of the loch goes, 

 which has extended over a period of twenty-two years, 

 I have found it quite as good of late as formerly. 

 The fish are of excellent quality, and, generally 

 speaking, most handsome in appearance, but always 

 uncertain to rise ; though in some seasons they take 

 more freely than in others. In 1903 I fished the 

 loch a number of times, spread over a period of 

 two months, that is, during May and June, and 

 found that I rarely obtained more than a dozen 

 trout in a day ; but in the gross takes the fish 

 averaged fully three-quarters of a pound apiece (all 

 caught on the fly), and the largest weighed three 

 pounds and two ounces. Other seasons I have seen 



