THE EWE 20I 



Humphry gives only a slight preference to the Brora over the Ewe 

 " for certainty of sport." What a change has taken place in the 

 interval ! In writing of the Ewe in 1813, Sir Humphry says : 

 " If you could have seen this river twenty years ago, when the 

 cruives were a mile higher up, then you might have enjoyed fishing. 

 There were eight or ten pools of the finest character possible for 

 angling, where a fisherman of my acquaintance hooked thirty fish 

 in a morning. The river was then perfect, and it might easily 

 be brought again into the same state ; but even as it is now, with 

 this single good pool and this second tolerable one, I know no place 

 where I could, in the summer months, be so secure of sport as 

 here — certainly nowhere in Great Britain." 1 



In the old days it was a common occurrence for the then Sir 

 Kenneth Mackenzie to take twenty and more clean fish in a day — 

 many of them of great weight — up to 30 lb., which, as a writer of 

 that period puts it, " afford such exceeding sport, frequently unwind- 

 ing from sixty to ninety yards of line at a single burst, that anyone 

 accustomed to kelt fishing can have little idea of the excitement ! " 



It is here, perhaps, worthy of remark that this is not by any 

 means the only allusion made by old writers to kelt fishing as a 

 form of sport recognised amongst our ancestors of from eighty to 

 a hundred years ago, and it is possible that this sort of angling 

 may have been the cause of so many rivers having been declared 

 open to the rod on the nth of February, although clean fish were 

 never seen in them until one, two, and even three months later. 



In 1S20 the net fishing began on the 14th of January and 

 continued till the 28th of August, in which period 415 salmon and 

 2727 grilse were killed. For that year the wages biU came to 

 £25, i8s. ! besides £2 paid to one George Mitchell as " expenses for 

 his vitals," with a further £2' los. for " whiskee for the concern." 



Mr. John H. Dixon, who had Inveran for seventeen years, and 

 took a warm interest in the subject, writes to the Fishery Board 

 as follows : — 



" During the ten years I have known the Ewe, I do not think 

 the take of fish by rod has averaged more than forty salmon a 

 season." [What a contrast to Sir Humphry's friend with his 

 thirty hooked in one morning !] " Notwithstanding the recurrence 

 of a good season in 1883, I do believe that the stake- and bag-nets 

 are gradually but surely diminishing the stock of salmon, and I 

 have no doubt that, sooner or later, the weekly close time must 

 be extended. The by-laws are not duly observed ; there is no 

 one to see that they are." 



After a good spate the river keeps in order for a week or ten 

 days. Nearly all the small standard patterns will kill, especially 

 those most in use on the Tweed. The three favourites are a Black 

 Wasp with rough pig's wool body, and then come Sir Richard and 

 Jock Scot, dressed without jungle-cock cheeks, which are supposed 

 by the natives to be unsuitable to the Ewe. 



1 In 1S13 bag-nets hardly existed. 



