FISHING BY MOONLIGHT 



CHAPTER I 



Highland Lakes— Steam-boats — Small Lochs — Wild Cats — Ravens — Dragging the 

 Lake — The Crea — Fishing at Night — Pike — Trolling large Trout on Loch Ness — 

 Flies, Otters, etc. — Fishing with the Otter — Spawning Trout. 



The beauties of Loch Lomond, Loch Awe, and several other 

 of the Highland lakes, are almost as well known to the English 

 as Regent Street or Hyde Park. Lovely and magnificent as 

 all these visited lakes are, and worthy of the praise of the poet 

 and the pencil of the painter, there are unnumbered other 

 Highland lochs whose less hackneyed beauties have far greater 

 charms for me. Visit Loch Lomond, or many others, and you 

 find yourself surrounded by spruce cockneys, in tight-waisted 

 shooting-jackets, plaid waistcoats, and (so called) Glengarry 

 bonnets, all of whom fancy themselves facsimiles of Roderick 

 Dhu, or James Fitz-James ; and quote Sir Walter to young 

 ladies in tartan scarfs, redolent, nevertheless, of the land of 

 Cockayne. Steam-boats and coaches are admirable things, but 

 they spoil one's train of ideas, and terminate one's reverie when 

 enjoying the grandeur and sublimity of one of these spots of 

 beauty. Though a steam-boat, at a certain number of mjJes' 



