278 WHAT I HAVE SEEN WHILE FISHING 



draws near the pier the hotel may be seen high up 

 on the tree-clad mountain side. On the pier is the 

 host, Mr. Sam Tilston, whom I knew some twenty- 

 five or more years ago at another fishing not far 

 from Glen Lyon. 



Loch Ness is, I believe, the deepest loch in 

 Scotland, and consequently its water never ap- 

 proaches, even during the most intense frosts, 

 anything like freezing point. In the year 1807, 

 when the thermometer at Inverness was 40 degrees 

 below freezing point, it made no impression upon 

 the loch or river. 



Mr. William Scope, a great authority, says in 

 his " Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing,'* that 

 " the Ness is the forwardest river in Scotland," and 

 Mr. Alexander Fraser, in his evidence before a 

 Select Committee of the House of Commons in 

 1825, said the Ness was always privileged earlier 

 than any other river, and that the fish taken in 

 December and January were far the most valuable 

 and constituted more than one half of the weight 

 of the season's take from December to September. 

 Is it not extraordinary that, notwithstanding this 

 evidence, evidence borne out by the records of the 

 fish taken during the nine years just prior to the 

 inquiry, the river and loch should be closed to rods 

 until such a late period as the I4th day of February, 

 by which time, as I can personally vouch, the heavy 

 fish that run up in December are much deteriorated 

 both in quantity and quality ? 



