186 THE NAMELESS TARN 



Harris, the amazing total of fifty-four salmon and 

 twelve sea-trout, 1 or that of Lord Carmarthen, as he 

 then was, 2 who, on the Avington water of the Itchen, 

 landed eleven brace of heavy trout with the dry-fly on 

 a single day; and Itchen trout are the 'skeeriest' 

 known to me. 



I suppose that if certainty of success were the main 

 object for which one goes a-fishing, the place to go to 

 would be Loch Leven, from whose fair bosom no fewer 

 than 34,110 trout weighing 26,577 Ib. were expiscated 

 during the season of 1908. Assuming that the season 

 afforded 170 fishing days (which it did not), that gives 

 a daily average of 200 trout to the rods engaged. It 

 is not in the nature of things that all these rods were 

 wielded by adepts; a master of the craft, therefore, might 

 reckon himself sure of a respectable creel, and any 

 ordinary performer would do more than save his blank. 

 But for my own part I have never cast a line on Loch 

 Leven. Despite the notable quality of its trout, the 

 scene of perpetual club competitions for money prizes 

 is abhorrent to a modest exponent of the contemplative 

 man's recreation, and a recent enterprise, albeit wholly 

 barren of ponderable or tangible result, was redeemed 

 from fruitlessness by reason of those subsidiary delights 

 which can only be found in remote and unfrequented 



1 The conditions, of course, were wholly exceptional. The bay 

 was crowded with salmon which could not get up the little river 

 owing to the excessive drought. The waters of Loch Langabhat, a 

 sheet ten miles long, were raised by a dam at the outlet, and then 

 released to form an artificial spate. The result was that in six con- 

 secutive days three rods landed 333 salmon weighing 2026 Ib., and 

 71 sea- trout weighing 52 Ib. 



2 Now Duke of Leeds. 



