CHAPTER IX 



THE FLEET 



This small river, which drains seventy-three square miles, opens 

 on the 24th of February, and is netted till the loth of September 

 (ten days more than it should be), and fished by rod till the 31st of 

 October. Rising at an altitude of 750 ft. above sea-level, after a 

 run of twelve miles it falls into the Dornoch Firth, two miles to the 

 south of Golspie. The mouth is crossed by a viaduct just a thousand 

 yards long, over which passes the high road from Golspie to Dornoch; 

 in this there are four arches with sluices, which keep in due bounds 

 the currents of the river and the tides, the chief outlet being at the 

 north end of the viaduct and within a few yards of the Mound 

 Station. Above this viaduct the dammed waters form a reedy, 

 swampy lake, and farther up the lower part of the river is nearly 

 all dead water, yielding but little sport with salmon, though at 

 times sea trout are got. Fish do not enter the river until the first 

 flood at the end of June or early in July, which is a curious fact, 

 sandwiched as it is between the Brora and Helmsdale on the north 

 and the Kyle of Sutherland rivers on the south, all of which are 

 early ones. This little stream, however, has one peculiarity, 

 without which it would hardly be worth mentioning as a salmon 

 river, for it is the only place in Scotland where salmon are regularly 

 killed by rod and fly in salt water. 



About three miles seawards from the Fleet mouth is a stretch 

 of salt water called Loch Fleet, in which about an hour after the tide 

 ebbs a current is formed, which runs with all the rapidity of a strong 

 river stream, and in this salmon are taken with rod and fly. 



A further feature of the Fleet is the remarkable salmon ladder at 

 Torbol, on the Camach, a tributary on which there is a series of 

 falls some sixty feet in height, up which the fish have been success- 

 fully taken. The late Mr. Bateson of Cambusmore — which is at 

 present rented by Mr. Laurence Hardy, M.P. — was, I believe, the 

 inventor and engineer of this, the first fish-pass (about 1864) that 

 took fish up such a very formidable obstruction. 



The total length of the pass, which cost ;f6oo, is three hundred 

 and seventy-eight yards, the first one hundred and forty of which 

 are very steep, up which the fish are taken by the ingenious principle 

 of a ladder within a ladder, which provides two sets of pools, a larger 

 and a smaller, in the breadth of tire ladder, a large one on the right 

 hand side with a small one on the left. In the step below the order 



