284 FISHING GOSSIP. 



season of the year, the trout, under the operation of 

 heat and light, are accustomed to feed scaring to the 

 right and left the realities in the shape of pounders 

 and two-pounders of your visionary expectations. 

 It cannot be helped, however, for there is no reason- 

 ing with mar-sports of this sort, who have been 

 tutored to look upon the artificial fly as the only 

 legitimate means of capturing trout ; and so, on some 

 of the English rivers, no doubt, it is very properly 

 regarded ; but Tweed is different, and will bear, as 

 an important salmon-stream, to be treated under a 

 line of policy, in respect to its fresh-water trout, much 

 less conservative. 



Directly over the Burn Stream, on the south bank 

 of the river tower the Braeheads, the descent from 

 which is steep and hazardous, but partakes more of 

 the nature of a scaur, being composed of loose, shifty 

 earth and gravel, than of a precipice. Further up 

 Tweed, on the same side, we come to the Hare Crag, 

 a rock of some height which juts out into the river 

 and overlooks a fine salmon-hold that is seldom or 

 never without its tenant. I have taken a fish or two 

 here, and a perilous spot to commit the tackle to it 

 is, on account of the submerged rocks which lie in 

 conjunction with it. The most difficult of the salares 

 to deal with, under this peculiarity of shelter-ground, 

 is a boring kipper or brown male, which has become 

 familiarised with its quarters in other words has 



