298 THE FOOD OF OTTERS 



that when salmon are most in the mood for leaping 

 they are least in the mood for taking the fly. 



It was in this melancholy strain that my thoughts 

 ran one fine September day after fishing a famous beat 

 on the Spey 1 without inducing one of scores of great 

 fish that were showing themselves to make so much as 

 an offer at any of my daintiest lures. The water was in 

 perfect trim; the day, though a trifle hazy, was just 

 such an one on which, in former seasons, I had had 

 plenty of pulling ; the river was full of fish, chiefly large 

 ones, for on the previous day our party had landed twelve 

 salmon averaging 22| Ib. ; most of these fish were fresh 

 in from the sea, which was only a couple of miles distant ; 

 yet not one of them could be tempted to take hold. 



Presently my thoughts were diverted into another 

 course by the spectacle of a pretty, clean-run salmon 

 about 12 Ib. weight, lying dead on the gravel with the 

 'otter's bite' taken out of the thick of the shoulder. 

 Just that bite and no more two or three ounces of 

 flesh, for such is the otter's wasteful practice. He 

 hunts down his fish ; devours the morsel, always taken 

 from the same place, and often leaves the fair carcase 

 to be torn to pieces by gulls, crows, rats, and eels, unless 

 some crofter happens to pass that way before they get 

 their innings, and so secures it for his own larder. 

 This habit has earned for the otter in some parts of 

 the Highlands the grateful sobriquet of caraid-nam- 

 bochd the poor man's friend. 



There are or were before the war about twenty 

 packs of otter-hounds in the United Kingdom. Some 



1 Braebead, Spynie, and Corngabie in the Gordon Castle water, 



