AND ANGLING SONGS. 155 



My first visit to Loch Luichart led me to form a favourable 

 opinion of it as a trouting-loch. I fished it under the disad- 

 vantages generally met with in July, viz., a passive state of 

 atmosphere, combined with heat and sunshine. By the help of 

 ail occasional ripple, however, I succeeded in basketing two 

 dozen trout, weighing on the average nearly half a pound a-piece. 

 During a residence of some months in the neighbourhood of 

 Contin, I frequently laid this lake under contribution. It took 

 my fancy, as much on account of the scenery by which it is 

 approached, and its own pastoral beauty, as of the sport it 

 afforded. Under a good smart breeze, which chafed the margins, 

 and caused the formation of foam-lines on the surface, an effect 

 which every angler must have witnessed again and again, the 

 trout usually rose well. These lines or streaks, when the wind 

 happens to be travelling steadily up or down the loch (the form 

 of many of our Highland reservoirs admits, in regard to its 

 direction, the use of such terms), hold a parallel relation to the 

 water's edge, and lie at a distance from it, regulated by the 

 marginal indentations, force of air, etc., sometimes at an arm's 

 length, sometimes as far from the shore as one can manage to 

 cast. Occasionally, in very gusty weather, when the surface of 

 the water is hit in a particular way, the whole bosom of the lake 

 becomes ribbed over with them ; but in this case they are of no 

 telling advantage, whereas, when they are strictly marginal, they 

 exercise an attractive power over the fish, disposing them to look 

 out for surface-food, and approach the water's edge for this pur- 

 pose. Their doing so is easily explained. The wind, when in 

 a raised state, has at certain seasons a tendency to drive large 

 numbers of the weaker insects from the grassy, heathery, rushy, 

 or leafy banks into the water, alighting on which they are drifted 

 out until they come into contact with one of these foam -lines, 

 which in a manner arrests and holds them in durance. In this 

 way the frothy bands I am referring to serve the purpose of 



