84 FISHING GOSSIP. 



them and see for myself. The lessees of the Shin 

 and Thurso fisheries in Scotland will tell you that 

 the clean-run December and January fish are barren 

 and never will spawn, but they will admit that the 

 same description of fish which ascend in February 

 will spawn the following October. 



The following is an extract from the Angler-Xa- 

 turalist, which illustrates the influence of the source 

 of a river upon the earliness or lateness of its fish : 



" This " (the early ascent of salmon) " is often the 

 case in rivers issuing from large lakes, in which the water 

 has previously undergone a sort of filtering process, and 

 has become warmer, owing to the greater mass and higher 

 temperature of its source ; whilst, on the other hand, streams 

 which are liable to be swollen by the melting of snows, 

 or cold rains, or which are otherwise bleak and exposed, 

 are later in season, and yield their principal supply where 

 the great lake rivers are beginning to fail. Two of 

 the Sutherland streams offer good examples of these oper- 

 ating causes. One, the Oikel, springs from a small exposed 

 alpine pool some half mile in breadth ; the other, the Shin 

 (a branch of the Oikel), takes its rise in the deep sweeping 

 waters of Loch Shin and its tributary lakes. The Shin joins 

 the Oikel about five miles from the sea. Early in the spring, 

 all the salmon entering this common mouth diverge at the 

 junction, pass up the Shin, and thus return, it would appear, 

 to their own warmer stream ; whilst very ft-w keep the main 

 course of the Oikel until a much later period." 



I now propose to explain the circumstances under 

 which January fishing, in particular, has been sane- 



