cHarF. 1.) TROUT—PIKE—CHAR. u 
ance of a monstrous fish with long hair. It was a scene worthy 
of a painter, as the men with eager gestures scrambled up the fish 
glancing like silver in the moonbeams; and then, as they rowed 
round, sometimes lost in the shade of the pine-trees, which com- 
pletely darkened the surface of the water immediately below the 
rocks on which they grew, or came again into full view as they 
left the shadow of the woods, the water sparkling and glancing 
from their oars. Frequently they stopped their wild chant, as the 
strange cries of the different nocturnal animals echoed loudly from 
the rocks, and we could hear the men say a few words of Gaelic 
to each other in a low voice, and then recommence their song. 
We always caught the largest fish at night-time, both trout 
and pike, the latter frequently above twenty pounds’ weight, 
with the teeth and jaws of a young shark. Sometimes the net 
brought in a great number of char, which appear to go in large 
shoals ; but these latter only in the autumn. 
In these lochs I killed great numbers of pike and the larger 
trout by means of floating lines, which we put in at the wind- 
ward side of the lake, to be carried down by the wind. On 
favourable days, in March or October, when there was a brisk 
wind, the lines went but half way across the loch before every 
hook had a fish on it, and then commenced a rare chace. When 
we neared afloat with a large pike hooked to it, as the water was 
very clear, the fish took the alarm and swam off at a great pace, 
often giving us some trouble before we could catch him. I have 
seen an empty corked-up bottle, with line attached, used as a float 
for this kind of fishing, instead of the corks. Pike are very 
capricious in taking the bait, and some days not one would move, 
although the wind and weather all seemed favourable; while on 
other days every float had a fish to it. Again, the fish would be 
quiet for some time, and then suddenly a simultaneous impulse 
seemed to seize them, and they would seize the baits as quickly 
as we could wish, for the space of an hour or so. 
The trout seldom take a dead bait during the daytime, but we 
often caught them on hooks left in the water all night. Tn all 
the Highland lakes on which I have fished in this way, large 
eels would sometimes take the hook, and often break my lines. 
It is frequently said that putting pike into a lake would destroy 
the trout-fishing; but I have invariably found that in all 
