LOCH MORE 249 



severity of winter lowers the water temperature and checks ascent. 

 The same, I believe, happens on the Naver. In both rivers practi- 

 cally no obstructions occur. The earliest of the fish are reported 

 to average from 15 to 25 Ib. They have frequently been specially 

 observed because some doubt existed and exists as to their subse- 

 quent movements. The late Mr. Dunbar was convinced that 

 those very early tish returned to the sea and reascended before 

 spawning. The obtaining of reliable evidence on this point is 

 difficult, but from the evidence of netsmen who work at the 

 mouths of rivers, and who not infrequently catch coloured fish, 

 apparently descending from fresh water, and from the recapture 

 of a clean fish which was marked in the Beauly on 9th December, 

 1907, and recaptured, a clean fish, in the Ness at Dochfour on 19th 

 March following (1908), I am inclined to the view that the descent 

 of spring fish and of fish at later seasons fish which have not 

 spawned is more common than is usually imagined. The record of 

 this recapture is, so far as I know, the first of its kind. The fish 

 was netted in the Beauly when fish were being collected in the close 

 time to supply ova to Lord Lovat's hatchery. Its weight was then 

 22 Ib. When caught in the neighbouring Eiver Ness, 101 days later> 

 the weight was found to be 20 Ib. This does not look as if any 

 feeding, even in the sea, had gone on in the interval. 



The reason why Loch More is not commonly fished till April is 

 not so much, perhaps, that it does not hold fish, or did not hold fish, 

 but that once boat fishing begins in the loch, men are apt not to return 

 to the river and fish it properly. I stoutly contend that men should 

 not prefer to cast from a boat in a loch, but the fact remains that if 

 more fish are to be had by this plan men will forsake the river. To 

 my mind the interest of fishing a river from the bank or by wading 

 is always superior to fishing in the best of lochs. In the syndicate '& 

 time the boat-house was kept rigidly locked till 1st April. That 

 fish were to be got, however, seems sufficiently clear from a story 

 told me by Sir Herbert Maxwell. A friend of his, being on one 

 occasion tired of fruitlessly flogging the river, which, owing to a 

 bright, dry January, had run down too low, walked up to Loch More 

 one day early in February. He and his ghillie broke open the boat- 

 house and commenced fishing about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. In an 

 hour and a half he had killed 4 fish weighing from 15 to 21 Ib. each. 1 



1 A series of Thurso temperatures, taken at Loch More, Dale, Thurso, and in the 

 sea, for the year 1886, will be found in the Journal Scottish Meter eological Society \. 

 Series iii., No. iv., 1886. 



