FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 disappointment through the caprice of the British climate, wrote these 

 lines in the visitors' book of an hotel where he had wasted a good deal of 

 his holidays waiting in vain for a spate : 



Sometimes too early and sometimes too late, 

 Sometimes too little and sometimes in spate ; 

 Sometimes too windy and sometimes too calm, 

 Sometimes too frosty and sometimes too warm ; 

 Sometimes too drumly and sometimes too clear — 

 There's aye something wanting when I'm fishing here. 



Wind and temperature may be reckoned as being independent of human 

 control; but command of a hill loch, situated in waste land of merely 

 nominal value, puts it in one's power to create an artificial spate at plea- 

 sure. The first person to turn such capabilities to account was Mr Nay- 

 lor and two friends, who, in 1888, during a period of great drought, 

 dammed the outlet of Loch Langabhat in the Island of Lewis. There were 

 thousands of salmon and sea -trout waiting in the bay for a chance of 

 ascending the river Grimersta, which had shrunk to impracticable pro- 

 portions. On August 21 he released the water which had been stored by 

 the dam, thereby creating a spate in the little river. Salmon and sea- 

 trout swarmed into it immediately. In six days before the end of the 

 month these three gentlemen landed 333 salmon weighing 2,026 lb. and 

 71 sea-trout weighing 52 lb. In nineteen days' fishing Mr Naylor killed 

 214 salmon weighing 1,307 lb. and 304 sea-trout weighing 161 lb. His 

 heaviest bag was on August 28, where in nine hours' fishing he landed 

 54 salmon, and left off an hour and a half before dark because, as he him- 

 self confessed, he was ** tired of slaughter." So would most of us have been, 

 I fancy; salmon-fishing would part with its principal charm, which is 

 inseparable from its uncertainty, if it were reduced to the mechanical pro- 

 cess of hauling out a fish every ten minutes in a long day. The exploits of 

 Mr Naylor and his friends are here referred to, not from any admiration for 

 record-breaking — ^far from it — ^but as proof of the extent to which natural 

 waters may be rendered productive of sport by artificial appliances. 



It is to be observed that the average weight of these Grimersta sea -trout 

 was little over | lb. That low standard was owing to the angling having 

 taken place in the month of August, when the great run of herlings or 

 finnocks (sea -trout in the grilse stage) takes place. Had it been a month 

 or six weeks earlier in the season, when the large sea -trout chiefly run, 

 the result would have been very different — ^larger fish and fewer of them. 

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