CHAPTER LXVI 



THE DEE OF KIRKCUDBRIGHTSHIRE 



Drains three hundred and sixty square miles, and is one of the 

 most productive netting rivers of the Sohvay Firth. It flows 

 from Loch Dee, a somewhat out-of-the-way loch in the west of 

 the county, famed for its trout, but into which salmon cannot 

 pass. After a run of twenty miles or so it joins a larger stream, 

 the Ken, just opposite Parton Station, the two shortly expanding 

 into another Loch Dee, from whence the Dee flows for twelve miles, 

 a big river until, shortly before reaching the royal burgh of Kirk- 

 cudbright, it forms an estuary and joins the Solway Firth six miles 

 lower down. The Ken rises to the east of the high hill of Caims- 

 muir, and has a run, during which it receives the waters of the 

 Deugh, of twenty-eight miles before it unites with the Dee, and at 

 the late end of the season a few fish ascend both these streams. 

 Below New Galloway the Ken expands into Loch Ken, five miles 

 long and abounding in pike. From this loch about a hundred years 

 ago came the largest of these fresh-water sharks ever got in Scotland ; 

 it weighed 72 lb. and was killed by rod and fly by George Murray, a 

 gamekeeper in the employ of the Earl of Stair, and the head is still 

 to be seen in Kenmure Castle. 



Below Loch Dee the river is fished in two ways peculiar to itself : 

 first, by " yairs," some of which are owTied by Captain Hope, R.N., 

 of St. Mary's Isle, and others by the town of Kirkcudbright. These 

 yairs are V-shaped wickerwork erections ; a man sits at the point 

 of the V with a net of peculiar shape and construction, and as soon 

 as he feels a fish strike, it is hauled up ; the opening at the point of 

 the V is about six yards in width. One set of yairs is used to fish 

 with the flood tide and another with the ebb. Of course, these 

 instruments are quite contrary to the general rule prevailing all 

 over Scotland, except on the Solway, viz. that fixed engines for the 

 capture of salmon within a river or estuary are illegal. 



The second unusual method is the capture of fish by what 

 is called the shoulder net. It is used in the numerous holes or pots 

 in the rocky bed of the river lying between Tongueland and the tide, 

 and is nothing more than a gigantic landing net, with a pole of 

 twenty-four feet long, a net six feet deep, and a ring of five feet 

 across from the pole, and about seven feet in breadth ; it is used 

 chiefly at night for searching all these pots, and after exploring one, 

 it is raised by placing the pole in a wooden shoe fastened to the 



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