THE NESS AND MORISTON 227 



noted casts, both usually fished from a boat, although the former 

 can be fairly well commanded by wading. This is followed by the 

 Ness Side water of about half a mile of both banks, and owned 

 by Mr. J. Godman, and then the Bucht water of Colonel A. J. C. 

 Warrand extends down to the sea, although Mrs. Innes has alternate 

 days on the Little Isle Pool and the Silver Pool all through the 

 season. The Friar's Shott is owned by the town, while some two 

 hundred yards on the right bank of the Holm water is the property 

 of Mr. Angus Mackintosh. 



As regards the Town water, the Friar's Shott is really all that 

 belongs to it ; but by an old charter, from the Little Isle Pool to the 

 sea is free to the public every ninth day, the first open day always 

 being the first of the free days. Personally, I have never been 

 fortunate enough to be in Inverness on one of these free days 

 during August and the following months, but I have heard fishers 

 are so numerous that it is difficult to cast without danger of being 

 hooked or hooking someone else, and that these occasions give 

 rise to a good deal of fun and banter, and tend to a considerable 

 consumption of whisky. 



The casts on this water are : The Red Brae, all boating ; 

 the Mill Stream, waded from either side ; Maclntyre's, waded 

 from either side ; the General's Well, waded from left bank ; Cross 

 Hedging, waded from left bank, but dangerous ; Little Isle, fished 

 from either side ; Silver Pool, fished from either side ; the Friar's 

 Shott is nearest to the sea. 



The Garry and the Oich, which send their waters to the sea 

 by the Ness, have already been dealt with in a separate chapter, 

 which indeed they fully merit, and the only other salmon river 

 emptying into Loch Ness is the Moriston, which falls into it on the 

 north shore, seven miles below Fort Augustus. This is a river of 

 considerable size, as it drains one hundred and fifty-eight square 

 miles of the Ness basin. It flows from Loch Clunie, six miles long, 

 and has a course of twenty-five miles. Up to 1870 a sheer fall of 

 twenty-eight feet, half a mile above the mouth, formed an absolute 

 bar to the ascent of fish. At about that date the late Mr. T. T. 

 Stoddart, the well-known and enthusiastic Tweedside angler, called 

 the attention of the Fishery Board to the ease with which the 

 Moriston could be converted from a mere fronting stream into a 

 fine salmon river. This eventually led to the construction, at a 

 cost of ^2000, of a salmon ladder, which v/ent round the fall with a 

 length of two hundred and forty feet and a gradient of one foot 

 in ten. Shortly after the completion of this fish-way, salmon were 

 seen, and later on caught on the spawning grounds above the fall. 

 It was not, however, a great success, for between the foot of the fall 

 and Loch Ness there is a stretch of water with very little run on 

 it, and thus there was no good, strong stream to lead the fish to the 

 mouth of the ladder. Therefore, for the ensuing seven years the 

 river was not fished. It was, moreover, helped by a hatchery put 

 up above the fall by the proprietor, and thus every chaace. wns. given 



