SEA-TROUT FISHING 



The present writer, strolling one day through the grounds of a million- 

 aire, who had replaced a modest old Scottish mansion with a palace of 

 exceeding splendour, came upon a gang of men working for a London 

 contractor who had undertaken to lay out a large rock garden, without 

 which no wealthy gentleman's establishment is now considered com- 

 plete. Grand and costly as was the scale of the design, there seemed to 

 me to be something puerile in the attempt to mimic with slabs of stone 

 and buckets of cement the haphazard confusion of nature, for this park 

 is situated amid some of the most romantic scenery in North Britain — 

 amid soaring peaks, sweeping rivers and churning tides. It so happened 

 that, although there were a thousand dripping crags and a hundred 

 thunderous linns within a few miles of this garden, there was no water 

 available on the spot, and a supply had to be brought from a distance at 

 considerable expense in order to create a cascade for the rock garden. 

 When I remarked to the young clerk of the works that he must have found 

 some difficulty in this respect, he remarked proudly — ^"You would be 

 surprised, sir, what a wonderful effect our firm can produce with a 

 one -inch pipe ! " 



Even so, it is wonderful what improvement can be wrought upon the 

 angling capabilities of small rivers through the judicious expenditure of 

 moderate capital. In water storage lies the secret of the regeneration 

 of depleted fisheries and the creation of new ones, whether for salmon 

 on a large scale or sea-trout on a smaller one. The ideal in this matter 

 is the storage of such a mass of water as will serve to maintain an 

 even flow in the river throughout the summer droughts, thereby 

 affording easy access to the fish and protecting them from the dangers 

 inseparable from hanging about on the coast and in the estuary waiting 

 for a flood and exposed to decimation by nets and natural enemies. 

 Among the latter, seals and porpoises are the most relentless raiders, 

 but even their depredations might not seriously diminish the shoals, 

 which suffer chiefly from the perfection to which mechanical means of 

 capture have been brought. 



In estimating the extent to which any river has been depleted of salmon 

 by the action of nets, one has always to take account of the tendency of old 

 fishermen to extol the doings of their youth and to compare the present 

 unfavourably with the past. Moras Hon numerant nisi serenas: overlooking the 

 lean years, their memories retain the impression of seasons when salmon 

 swarmed in every pool. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt whatever 



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