CHAPTER LXX 



THE BORDER ESK 



Rises on Eskdalemuir in the high hills dividing the counties of 

 Dumfries and Selkirk, with a course of forty miles and a drainage 

 area of four hundred and thirty-one square miles, of which three 

 hundred and nine are in Scotland and one hundred and twenty-two 

 in England. It falls into the head of the Solway Firth, eight miles 

 to the east of the Annan. A few miles above Longtown it ceases 

 to be a Scotch river and enters English soil, from which pouit to the 

 sea is a distance of six miles. 



The Esk has upwards of twenty tributaries, some of which 

 hold salmon and sea trout, the chief one being the Liddel, 

 which joins the Esk on the left bank three miles above Long- 

 town. 



The greater part of this river and its affluents is in the hands 

 and under the protection of the Esk and Liddel Fisheries Associa- 

 tion, a model institution formed in 1863, having for its proprietary 

 members the Duke of Buccleuch, Sir Richard Graham of Netherbj', 

 Sir Frederick Johnstone, and Messrs. ^V. E. ]\Ialcolm, Richard Bell, 

 G. Mounsey, and Thomas Beattie. The Association issues season, 

 monthly, weekly, and daily tickets at a very small charge, the cost 

 of a whole-season ticket being but four guineas, which gives the 

 right for nearly all the river and its affluents; and though some 

 portions of both are kept by the respective owners for their own 

 use, they are neither extensive nor numerous. Likewise the 

 Association rents the nets on the lower waters, and their removal 

 has greatly benefited the angling, which is looked after by four 

 water bailiffs, who also see that the rules are observed, the chief 

 ones being that no bait or minnow fishing is permitted on the Esk 

 and Liddel till the 1st of May, or after the 15th of September ; that 

 no angling is allowed between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., and that no gaff 

 be used before the ist of April. Rod-fishing on the tributaries closes 

 on the 1st of October, but is continued on the Esk and Liddel up to 

 the 31st of that month. 



I have fished the water from Longtown to the tide, and venture 

 to suggest that it would be to the advantage of all the ticket-holders 

 if a strict rule were made prohibiting anyone from beginning to 

 fish a stream below an angler already casting it. This was an experi- 

 ence I had to put up with several times in the two days I fished this 

 water, but as I was only there for such a short time, I did not make 



