CHAPTER XII 

 A MAYO LAKE 



sport in county Mayo — Past and present — Romantic scenery — Clew 

 Bay — A seven-mile trot — Lough Beltra — Neighbouring mountains — 

 Search for a boat — "The best on the lough" — A leaky vessel — 

 Ashore for another — Some good trouting — A fight with a sea-trout — 

 More " white trout " — Habits of these fish — Scarcity of males — Feed- 

 ing in fresh water — Evidences — Variances in brown trout — Some 

 Norway examples — A fair bag — Ashore and homeward — Beautiful 

 scenes. 



WHO that has once fished in county Mayo in fine 

 weather can ever forget it? Sport may not 

 always be quite what it was in the great days when 

 salmon and white trout swarmed, when the fisheries 

 had not been half ruined by mismanagement, needy 

 landlords, and ubiquitous poachers, and the angler was 

 pretty sure of a heavy creel wherever and whenever he 

 went out. Yet even now, despite many drawbacks, 

 excellent fishing is here and there to be obtained, 

 white trout are fairly abundant, while, as for brown 

 trout, every lake, every river, every tiny stream that 

 runs sparkling amid the glens and mountains of this 

 lovely land is full of them. In the way of scenery, 

 there is scarce a corner of the British Isles that can 

 approach county Mayo, with its glorious mountains, 

 its romantic valleys and passes, its wild moorland, its 

 unrivalled coastline. The clean, soft air, fresh from 

 a thousand leagues of virgin Atlantic, is perfection 

 itself. There is nothing else quite like it, except, 



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