CHAPTER XXXIII 



THE FINDHORN 



Rises in the deer forest of Coignafearn, in the Monahadh Mountains, 

 and after a course of from sixty to seventy miles, in which it drains 

 three hundred and forty-six square miles of country, it runs into 

 the Moray Firth at Findhorn. The chief tributaries are the Moy, 

 flowing from the loch of the same name, and the Dorback, emptying 

 Loch an Dorb. The best angling water is in the twenty miles 

 lying between and commencing a little above the Bridge of Dulsie 

 and ending at the top of the famous Sluie Pool, in which netting 

 by boat and coble commences and is carried on with the greatest 

 energy right down to the ever-shifting mouth of the Findhorn. 



As far as spring and summer sport is concerned, this beautiful 

 river is nearly a blank, for not only are the ascending fish caught 

 in the river nets, but to the east of Findhorn mouth, in Burghead 

 Bay, and to the west in Findhorn Bay, the whole coast bristles 

 with stake- and bag-nets, which trap a very large quantity of fish ; 

 and naturally under such circumstances the owners of the twenty 

 miles of good angling water which lies above Sluie are quite left 

 out in the cold, for there can be no doubt that, if the river were 

 even fairly well stocked, the anghng would be valuable either for 

 sport to the owners or for letting. In 1840 or thereabouts it was 

 not uncommon for anglers to get from five to ten fish in a day. 

 Thirty years later, in 1870, it came to be thought quite good sport 

 if during the whole netting season every two miles of water gave a 

 fish to the rod ! That state of affairs still continues, and it would 

 now be impossible to kill as many fish in a whole season as were 

 killed in a day in 1840. 



The Sluie Pool has from time immemorial been famed for its 

 netting, and from it there came the second largest haul of fish ever 

 recorded. In 1648 the Earl of Moray wrote to his Countess that 

 " in one night on the pool of Sluie alone 13,000 salmon were taken, 

 and 26 scores at one draught." 1 About the year 1800 this pool 

 gave up 360 fish in one day, but in 1842 it was reported that 

 the total yield of all the pools for the whole season had fallen below 

 700. But what can be expected when, in 1882, on the twenty-one 

 miles of coast in the Findhorn district, there were 137 fixed nets, or 



1 13,000 salmon out of one pool Ib one night seems to me nearly an im- 

 possibility, and I have always thought it should have read : 1300 in one night, 

 or 13 000 in the whole season. 



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