FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 wildling trout for the certainty of a full basket under the guidance of a 

 couple of sophisticated boatmen on cosmopolitan water, who probably 

 have bets with other boatmen upon the result of one's fishing, and are 

 dissatisfied with one who will not fish with as feverish diligence as if he 

 were baling a sinking boat in mid-channel. 



I know of no waters closely adjacent to each other between which the 

 contrast is more striking in the quality of the fish they contain than the 

 different lochs and tarns which skirt the Moor of Rannoch. That vast soli- 

 tude is over 1 ,200 feet above sea level, and contains the wreck of the prime- 

 val forest imbedded in profound peat. At the north-east extremity of the 

 moor, in the heart of Corrour Forest, lies Loch Ossian, a fine sheet of 

 water filling a granite basin between Beinn-na-Lap and Carn Dearg, both 

 above 3,000 feet high. The lake is four miles long and nowhere more 

 than half a mile across, abounding in shallow bays, but of great depth 

 down the middle of the cleft. No more promising sheet of water can be 

 imagined by the fly -fisher, but none could prove more disappointing. 

 It is full of little starveling trout whereof one might catch a hundred or 

 two in a day without excessive effort, yet would not one of these fish exceed 

 the dimensions of a robust gudgeon. 



In the same water system, and distant only a few hundred yards from 

 the head of Loch Ossian, are half a dozen insignificant little tarns, varying 

 in size from half an acre to, say, twenty acres. From one of these, a dark 

 little mere of about three acres at most, it was reported that a station- 

 master on the West Highland Railway had taken a trout of 4 lb. on a night- 

 line. I was fired with ambition to try my luck there in more chivalrous 

 fashion and induced a friend to go with me. Having described the result of 

 our expedition elsewhere, I crave leave to quote the passage: 



•* Only a small part of this tarn can be commanded from the shore, 

 so wide and dense is the belt of reeds surrounding it; so my host 

 undertook, in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties, to cause 

 a boat to be conveyed thither. It was latish before this was accom- 

 plished; the soft air of a grey morning had hardened and turned 

 gusty — not the kind of after-day to bring trout to the surface. How- 

 ever, there we were to make the best of it; there was the lochan, lying 

 snugly in lee of the sheltering dome of Beinn-na-lice (which, if you 

 would not be misunderstood, you must pronounce to rhyme, not 

 with "slice," but with "streaky"), its waters impenetrably dark in 

 the calm — silver frosted in the breeze. 

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