42 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



great cost. It sometimes happens that when the Finglas is in spate, 

 Loch Achray has not risen to flood level, and, the Blackwater being 

 at this point very flat, has its current reversed for a time, and owing 

 to the flood of the Finglas flows into Loch Achray instead of out of it. 

 Loch Achray is still more of a trouting loch than a place where 

 the capture of salmon can be relied upon. Boats are supplied from 

 the Trossachs Hotel, and the loch is open to the public ; but fish are 

 rather late in reaching the locality, and none were reported as having 

 been taken in 1908. The beauties of the loch are to many, perhaps, 

 more attractive than any fishing. The " bosky thickets " of birch 

 and rowan which closely fringe the water's edge seem to allow the 

 little loch to nestle in their embrace. 



" Aloft, the ash and warrior oak 

 Cast anchor in the rifted rock : 

 And, higher yet, the pine tree hung 

 His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung, 

 Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, 

 His bows athwart the narrow'd sky, 

 Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, 

 Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced, 

 The wanderer's eye could barely view 

 The summer heaven's delicious blue ; 

 So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 

 The scenery of a fairy dream." 



The loch is about one and a quarter miles long, and a maximum 

 width of nearly one -third of a mile. The waters cover an area of 

 205 acres, and the mean depth has been found to be 36 J feet, and 

 the maximum depth 97 feet. It is a simple basin, having one 

 central area of deep water, two-thirds of a mile being under the 

 50-feet line. There are shallows off the mouth of the Achray Water 

 and between the mouth and the Trossachs Hotel. At the eastern 

 end of the loch there is a depression of 27 feet surrounded by shallow 

 water, and at another place there is what the members of the 

 Bathymetrical Survey considered to be a submerged crannog covered 

 by only one or two feet of water. 



Loch Vennacher, which is the last loch in this the central chain, 

 is about 4 miles long and has a mean breadth of two-fifths of a 

 mile. It is 270 feet above sea-level and has an average depth of 

 41 feet, and a maximum depth of 111 feet, or eight fathoms and a 

 half. It is therefore comparatively shallow. 



Only a few years ago it was as barren of salmon in the fishing 



