LOCH-FISHING. 423 



hooks for eels, as the great likelihood is that the first that 

 comes may have a mouth too small for sucking in your hook, 

 lut large enough to devour your lait ; in fact, there are twenty 

 small for one large ; and from a line of three dozen hooks, it 

 is a very good night's work to kill half-a-dozen large eels. 



I have thus given an outline of the different kinds of fishing 

 in fresh-water lochs except perch, which float and worm recrea- 

 tion, as it has come under the ban of Dr Johnson, I might 

 leave the novice to find out for himself. All he has to do is 

 to ascertain their haunt, which any one in the vicinity can 

 show ; fasten a float to his line, and a No. 1 hook ; bait with 

 an earth-worm ; throw in without art ; and give the fish time 

 to gorge the bait before striking, or it may slip out of its 

 capacious mouth after being sucked in. 



MOUNTAIN TARNS. 



There are a number of little mountain tarns in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Inverary, most of them well stocked. A chain of 

 lochans, about eight miles over the hills, is well worth the fly- 

 fisher's attention. I climbed to them, one balmy day, with my 

 fly-trouting rod, and a few casts round my hat. The scenery 

 from the tops of the hills did not much hit rny fancy, although 

 the views of Loch Fyne and the opposite glens no doubt are 

 pleasing. It was a long dreary walk, with few objects of in- 

 terest to shorten it, except the instinctive wiles of a moss- 

 cheeper (meadow-pipit) and a merlin to decoy me from their 

 respective nests. The pipit really deceived me at first, so 

 completely did it sham a broken leg and wing. As for the 

 little falcon, although I marked the very spot she rose from, 

 all my ingenuity could not discover her young. She flew 

 about, appearing quite unconcerned so long as I kept near this 

 place; but when I walked away, she always pitched down, 

 making a great fuss, as much as to say, " Keep off my nest : 



