CHAPTEE X. 



THE SPEY DISTRICT. 



ANGLING SEASON : llth February to 15th October. 

 NETTING SEASON : llth February to 26th August. 



District Fishery Board sits in Elgin. Clerk, T. R. Mackenzie, Esq., Solicitor, Elgin. 



THE drainage area of this district is 1097 square miles, being the 

 largest but one the Tay in Scotland ; but the district is peculiar 

 in this, that large lochs do not exist, and the entire length of the 

 area is practically occupied by the river. Tributaries such as the 

 Druie and Avon rise in part from lochs, and at one part of the main 

 river a shallow loch (Loch Insh) exists, but this last is merely a 

 large widening of the river over a flat surface of surrounding 

 country. None of the tributaries is of first-class importance for 

 angling ; but several of them are first-class spawning streams. The 

 Tweed is the only other district in Scotland in which so much actual 

 river channel exists, and in which spawning grounds may be found 

 over a very widely-extended waterway. 



THE EIVER SPEY. 



The total length of the river is about a hundred miles, and in 

 character it may be divided into an upper and lower section at a 

 point a short distance above Castle Grant. From this point down- 

 wards the Spey is uniformly good in its succession of pools and long 

 streams of fine flowing water ; and this section of the river is the 

 one over which angling is most steadily practised with success. 

 Above this point the river is very variable in character, now pre- 

 senting a broad rippling surface, now an eddying pool, and not 

 infrequently a long stretch of still, meandering water with earthy 

 banks and weedy edges. 



The river actually rises away in the western portion of Badenoch, 



