236 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



Unfortunately at such times I have never found any, and 

 I have repeatedly experienced the deadening influence of the 

 surmise that no fish are in the water. The temptation to stop 

 fishing becomes more and more strong, till at last one's mind is 

 chiefly engaged in determining when the conditions of a fair trial 

 have been complied with so that one may reel up and be done with 

 it. One does not feel this sort of thing when one throws a fly on 

 the Helmsdale. The fish are there, and if you can't get them to 

 show up, it is the fault of the angler, or the weather, or the water, 

 or any of the other more or less imaginary causes with which the 

 fisherman commonly tries to console himself. At times the fish 

 are in great plenty, and more rarely, oh how rarely ! many of them 

 come on the rise. Eed-letter-days are then scored up. 



The greatest angling performance of which I have ever heard 

 was made on No. 5 upper beat of the Helmsdale by the late T. E. 

 Buckley on 9th June, 1896. Buckley always preferred, if possible, 

 to fish with fine tackle and without a ghillie. He was undoubtedly 

 a very fine fisherman, and a man of fine sporting sense. My friend, 

 Mr. Charles Akroyd, at one time well known on the Helmsdale, and 

 a cousin of Buckley's, has often told me of the pains the latter 

 would take to seize a chance of promising sport. On the day in 

 question Buckley had his fly on the water at the early hour of half- 

 past four, and had five fish out of " Crocken " before breakfast. 

 Adding another after his return, he then shifted to the " Still Water 

 Pool," which is just below Loch-na-Moine. At the tail of this pool 

 he spent the rest of the day, with fish rising keenly all the time. 

 Unhappily his rod a 12 foot single-handed trout rod broke, 

 and he had to walk about 4| miles to and from the house he was 

 stopping at to secure another and get to work again. The remark- 

 able thing was that in spite of the bold way in which fish were 

 taking, Buckley did not yield to the temptation which would have 

 seized most men to bring a stronger weapon and a ghillie, and so 

 secure a phenomenal score. He returned to the water with a 

 10 foot trout rod, and continued to use merely trout tackle. By 

 half -past seven he had landed 22, including 2 fifteen-pounders, and 

 had lost only 3. The banks of the river here are abrupt, and the 

 single-handed operation is a matter of great difficulty, a deal of time 

 being necessary to coax fish to the gaff in deep water at the side of 

 the river. With strong tackle the time necessary to land each fish 

 would have been greatly reduced, and many more fish would have 

 been hooked. I have seen one or two accounts of this great day, 



