TROUT FLIES 15 



while on a bright calm day a small black palmer should be 

 tried. There are endless favourite loch-flies, and it is seldom 

 that a person cannot be found to give you the requisite infor- 

 mation as to which to use : however, I never feel much at a 

 loss as long as I have some palmers in my fly-book. 



In putting night-lines into a large lake, the best places are 

 those where any burn or ditch runs into it, or along some 

 shallow sandy or gravelly bay, for in these places the fish feed 

 during the night-time. Worms, frogs, and small trout are the 

 best bait for night-lines. In trolling, the small silvery fish 

 supposed to be the young of the salmon, or the small kind of 

 herring called garvies, are the best bait. Preserved in spirits 

 of wine, they keep for a long time, and become so tough, that 

 they do not tear or break off your hook. If you take a fancy 

 to fish with a fly during the night in a lake, a large black fly is 

 the best, but unless it is drawn very slowly through the water, 

 the fish, though they rise, will miss it. 



A small fly which I have found to be always a favourite 

 with trout, is one made as follows : — Body yellow floss silk, 

 with landrail wing, and a turn or two of red heckle near the 

 head. In most waters this fly succeeds. In some of the small 

 black-looking lakes, far up in the solitudes of the mountains, 

 where no person is ever seen, unless a shepherd may chance 

 now and then to stray in their direction, or the deer-stalker 

 stops to examine the soft ground near the water edge for the 

 tracks of deer — in these lonely pools the trout seem often as 

 unconscious of danger as birds are said to be on a newly dis- 

 covered island ; and they will rise greedily at the rudest imita- 

 tion of a fly fastened to a common piece of twine, five or six 

 trout rising at once, and striving who should be caught first. 

 The fish in some of these lakes which are situated at a great 

 height, are excessively numerous, but generally black and small. 

 I have seen little black pools of this kind actually crowded 

 with small trout. 



The otter takes to the waters far up in the hills during the 

 summer time, where she may rear her young in the midst of 

 abundance and in solitary security. Making her lair on some 

 small island or point of land covered with coarse grass or 

 rushes, she lives in plenty and peace, till her young having 

 grown strong, and the frost? of winter having commenced, the 



