LOCH-FISHING 71 



and the fish were most eager when the water 

 was still, except for a tremendously heavy- 

 shower of rain, ' a singing shower,' as George 

 Chapman has it. On that day two rods caught 

 thirty-nine sea-trout, weighing forty pounds. But 

 it is difficult to say beforehand what day will do 

 well, except that sunshine is bad, a north wind 

 worse, and no wind at all usually means an empty 

 basket. Even to this rule there are exceptions, 

 and one of these is in the case of a tarn which I 

 shall call, pleonastically, Little Loch Beg. 



This is not the real name of the loch — quite 

 enough people know its real name already. Nor 

 does it seem necessary to mention the district 

 where the loch lies hidden ; suffice it to say that a 

 land of more streams and scarcer trout you will 

 hardly find. We had tried all the rivers and burns 

 to no purpose, and the lochs are capricious and 

 overfished. One loch we had not tried. Loch 

 Beg. You walk, or drive, a few miles from any 

 village, then you climb a few hundred yards of hill, 

 and from the ridge you see, on one hand a great 

 amphitheatre of green and purple mountain-sides, 



