10 THE TROUT 



localities these fish, however fat and well fed they may be, never 

 acquire this tint, which all those who are best acquainted with 

 these matters consider they acquire, by feeding on a variety of shell 

 fish, a kind of diet that is said to produce this effect upon them. 

 This is said to have been particularly the case with the trout in 

 Lochleven ; a place rendered memorable in the annals of our coun- 

 try from the fortified island in its centre, for some time the prison 

 of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, and which that country's 

 brightest genius has immortalized in the truly interesting pages of 

 the " Abbot ;" the fishes of which were so thoroughly satisfied 

 with the food Providence had so peculiarly favoured them with, as 

 to be insensible of the angler's lures, so that a successful day's 

 angling in Lochleven seems to have been beyond even the most 

 talented angler's hopes. The learned professor, however, who has 

 treated so admirably on the fishing in the northern parts of our 

 isle, in his elaborate treatise on the Rod, informs us that the con- 

 dition and flavour of these most envied fishes has been latterly 

 considerably deteriorated by a partial drainage of the loch, 

 which by laying open the beds of these shell- fish has placed the 

 finny inhabitants on short commons ; but whether this dearth in 

 choice provisions has rendered them more omniverous, he does 

 not proceed to inform us. That " hunger will tame a lion" is a 

 well-known proverb ; possibly it may make the Lochleven trout 

 rise at a fly? 



But the redness of the flesh is by no means a certain criterion of 

 the best flavour in the trout ; I have taken many that in deepness 

 of colour have even outvied the salmon, but which have had a 

 strong rank taste from a weed something like fennel, which often 

 in the hot months is found to abound in some of our rivers, whilst 

 I have eaten others of the finest flavour without the slightest tinge 

 of pink in their whole composition. In the Tamar, for instance, 

 and its tributaries, where in my time I have slain my thousands, I 

 never but once met with a trout that cut red, and that in flavour 

 was not superior to his colourless brethren who shared the same 

 dish with him ; nor did I ever meet with a red trout in any of the 

 Cornish rivers, though I have angled and very successfully too in 

 the greater part of them. On one occasion I remember catching 

 a remarkably fine trout in the latter county : i. e. that is for the 

 locality, for the Cornish trout are universally small; a half a pound 

 trout being there accounted a fine fish, whilst mine was little short 



