CHAPTER XXIII 



THE AWE 



Drains two hundred and seventy-one square miles of country and 

 empties Loch Awe, one of the largest of the Scotch lakes, into the 

 salt water of Loch Etive at Bonawe, about a mile below Taynuilt. 

 Like all rivers flowing from large lakes, it requires an extra long 

 spell of dry weather to put it out of order, and a corresponding 

 period of rain to flood it ; therefore it is seldom so small or so big 

 but what some of its pools will fish well. From the loch to the sea 

 it has a run of three miles, in which at short intervals is a succession 

 of splendid casts, offering the perfection of angling. From start to 

 finish it is nearly all quick, strong-running water, in which there is 

 hardly fifty yards that is not broken with patches of white spray and 

 foam, formed by the stream as it rushes over and round rocks and 

 boulders of all shapes and sizes. In this sort of water the most 

 expert angler may perhaps be " broken " time after time, and 

 many of his " twa-and-saxpenny flees " carried away. As a set-off 

 against these drawbacks he will have the chance of hooking a 

 whopper, and the fisherman has yet to be born who would shirk a 

 fight with a monster for fear of losing his tackle. 



Some twenty years ago I fished this river for seven days in 

 July ; during that time I hooked eleven big fish, the whole of them 

 rudely giving me the cut direct. In spite of this defeat I yet 

 thought I had had good sport, though freely mingled with very hard 

 luck. In this series of eleven disasters I was not cut immediately 

 the fish laid hold ; several gave twenty to thirty minutes of exciting 

 play before dashing headlong down stream to make for the sea, and 

 it was always in the broken white water at the tail of the pools 

 that the parting took place ; indeed on this river any fish that quits 

 its pool and dashes down stream, at a pace that makes the reel 

 shriek and the rod tremble, is pretty sure to cut the line, while on 

 the catches which are not farther than a mile from salt water, 

 it is nearly certain that as soon as hooked a big fish will do his 

 utmost to return to it. 



I have always thought from the way they fought that these 

 eleven lost fish were a succession of very heavy ones, which idea 

 received some sort of confirmation when the late Mr. Baird, who then 

 rented the nets at the mouth of the river, and is now succeeded by his 

 son, sent me one of my own special pattern Blue Doctors that his 

 men had cut out of the mouth of a thirty-three-pounder, netted a 



