DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 181 



fishing with him : " There are times when they'll 

 be taking maist anything, and ither times they 

 wouldna tak, they wouldna tak dang it ! they 

 wouldna tak your ladyship." 



Who can give us an unfailing sign by which we 

 may know a salmon from a kelt ? The signs are 

 everywhere on every kelt, yet I cannot find the 

 man who can give me one by which I may know a 

 fairly-mended silver kelt. It's just a problem that 

 must be demonstrated by laying the two side by 

 side, and then the difference will be so striking as 

 to afford an education that you cannot possibly 

 forget, and, for ever after, a kelt, like writing that 

 has become familiar, is unmistakable in every line. 

 Kelts are bogies that have frightened fishers into 

 returning many a clean fish. 



One of the cleverest Tay salmon fishers I have 

 met caught two fish in the Tummel, thought them 

 clean until too late to return them to the water, and, 

 liking them less and less after their death, buried 

 them under some bracken, and told me during 

 dinner what he had done, adding : " I feel sure 

 they are kelts." I felt sure they were not, or he 

 would have recognised them. Tummel salmon are 

 long and thin and much inclined to favour such 

 mistakes, but the fish in question were unusually 

 well-shaped and the fisher of such repute as to 

 seem beyond the reach of kelt-fright. 



It happened quite recently that a Captain's gillie, 

 following closely upon the Captain's heels, brought 

 to the hotel a silver kelt, and so unmistakable to me 

 was the character of the animal that I whispered to 

 the host while yet the fish and fisher were some 

 distance from the lobby. The gillie is a shepherd 



