LOCH-FISHING 69 



may have come into the loch from the river, by 

 way of the tiny feeder ; but the river-trout are both 

 scarce and small. A new farmer had given up 

 letting the water off, and probably there must have 

 been very rich feeding, water-shrimps or snails, 

 which might partly account for the refusal to rise 

 at the artificial fly. Or they may have been ottered 

 by the villagers, though that would rather have 

 made them rise short than not rise at all. 



There is another loch on an extremely remote 

 hillside, eight miles from the smallest town, in a 

 pastoral country. There are trout enough in the 

 loch, and of excellent size and flavour, but you 

 scarcely ever get them. They rise freely, but they 

 always rise short. It is, I think, the most provok- 

 ing loch I ever fished. You raise th^m ; they 

 come up freely, showing broad sides of a ruddy 

 gold, like the handsomest Test trout, but they 

 almost invariably miss the hook. You do not 

 land one out of twenty. The reason is, apparently, 

 that people from the nearest town use the otter 

 in the summer evenings, when these trout rise best. 

 In a Sutherland loch, Mr. Edward Moss tells us 



