TROUT-FISHING 



•• I had not the patience to wait till the boat wa8 launched. Leaving 

 it to my fellow -explorer, I began whipping along fifty yards or so of 

 rocky shore, the only part of the loch accessible from the land. I 

 cannot have made more than half-a-dozen casts when there came an 

 eddying bulge in the brown water that made my heart stop beating. 

 Nothing came of it, however: a big fish had missed the fly, and would 

 not be tempted to give another offer. Nor did I stir another fln in the 

 rest of my beat. By the time I came to the end of it my friend was 

 afloat — and, by the Hokey! he's in a fish and a good one too, judging 

 by the arc of his nine -footer. Deep, deep and ever deeper the unseen 

 quarry plunges, visiting every quarter of that little mere, warning 

 all his clan to take shelter from danger. Full twenty minutes were 

 added to the past before that doughty fish could be brought to the 

 surface and towed into the net. And how much did he weigh, think 

 you ? Six pounds ? Four ? Not less, surely, to judge from the stiffness 

 of the fight. Nay, but he barely pulled the steelyard down to 2^ lb., 

 having been hooked, not in the mouth, but in the dorsal fin. A beauti- 

 fully shaped fish, but very dark, suitably to his native environment, 

 without a single spark of scarlet on his skin. 



** By this time the evening had turned cold and raw. We left the 

 Nameless Tarn with but a single specimen of its inhabitants . . . but 

 the enjoyment of that afternoon bore no proportion to the weight of 

 the basket."* 

 The moral of this long yarn might have been conveyed more succinctly, 

 but set a fisherman talking of the past and trust him to test the quality 

 of your patience. The said moral is that, where there is no check on mul- 

 tiplication, a trout loch is sure to become a congested district, peopled 

 with fingerlings. To net out annually nine-tenths of the trout in Loch Ossian 

 would involve immense labour and the sacrifice of millions of innocent 

 lives, but it would turn a worthless fishery into an excellent one. There 

 is only one other expedient, namely, to turn in pike, but that is too hazar- 

 dous to be thought of. Even in dealing with a lake in the possession of a 

 single proprietor, he should never consent to the introduction of a fish 

 that is enormously prolific and has proved the ruin of some of the finest 

 natural trout waters in the realm. He might decide to risk the fortunes 

 of his own fishery, but there are very few waters unconnected with the 

 fisheries of other people, and these soon become infested also if pike are 



"Mtmoriit of the Months, Fifth Series, pp. 186-9. 



127 



