JANUARY 11 



there were still plenty of fine fish in 

 Loch Tay. 



At a time when it is not always easy 

 to be sufficiently warm within-doors one 

 naturally thinks with a shiver of " spring " 

 salmon-fishing, which begins before winter 

 is half over. The reality is less trying 

 than the imagination. Even amid wind 

 and frost and snow, elation of the spirit at 

 the chance of sport so animates the body 

 that the discomfort is astonishingly small. 

 How can you have cold feet, or be 

 conscious of them, when a thirty-pounder 

 may come on at any moment ? Note the 

 phrasing, please. You would not speak 

 of a trout " coming on," because when a 

 trout comes at a fly or other lure you 

 strike, and it is the strike that takes him 

 on ; but there is no other phrase for the 

 event in salmon -fishing. This is especially 

 true if it is a loch, rather than a river, you 

 are on. Not infrequently you raise a 

 salmon when fishing for trout on a loch ; 



