102 Appendices to Thirty-fourth Annual Report 



in which I think the plan was first drawn, the check upon the outflow being 

 less than was suggested, but the adopted arrangement will probably answer 

 satisfactorily, and in the letting down of floods disadvantage will not be 

 felt. From the main outlet the flow should have been checked by a dead 

 wall, from which the water had to regurgitate and find an outlet parallel 

 to the dyke and close to its down-stream face. 



Thurso. 



The effort to catch salmon in the sea by means of a large sweep net 

 worked from a motor boat, to which I referred in my last Report, was not 

 continued in 1915. This experiment, like previous trials of drift netting 

 in Scotland, proved a failure. 



The limits of the estuary are : — " A portion of a circle of 400 yards 

 radius drawn from a centre placed mid-channel at the line of low water 

 of equinoctial spring tides, and continued to the shore at high water by 

 tangents, that on the east being to a Point 500 yards north-east of Thurso 

 Castle, and that on the west being in the direction of the Toll House." 

 The Toll House does not now exist, but in 1912 I was able to establish 

 where it previously stood and to view the "old foundations on the still 

 vacant site. (31st Annual Report, p. 240). Irrespective of the site of 

 this old Toll House, however, the direction of the tangent to the semi- 

 circular estuary is sufficiently clear. 



Net and coble fishing is carried on in the estuary by a tenant, but in 

 terms of the lease it is not commenced till 1st June, and is not conducted 

 at all inside of a line between the end of the pier on the west side of the 

 river mouth and the northern corner of Thurso Castle. 



I have observed that the fishing by net and coble is carried on in a 

 manner which is not generally approved. At the commencement of the 

 shot the coble is rowed out, the end of the "tow" being left with a man 

 on shore as usual. When the rope is out, and at times when a fathom or 

 two of the net is out, the rowing of the shot is suspended and the boat is 

 moored while the fishermen watch for approaching fish. On these being 

 seen, the mooring is slipped, and the rest of the net is at once rowed out 

 and the shot completed. This is a method by which the least operative 

 part of the shot is got over so as to save time till fish are seen, the capture 

 of the fish being thus made more certain. It used to be practised regularly 

 in the Cromarty Firth, as was also regular stell-net fishing. 



When only part of the net was run out, the practice at Alness was not 

 to anchor the coble, but to allow the net to drift, and this method was 

 termed " lying at gantry." I am unable to give any derivation of the word 

 gantry or Gantry. The method of fishing was successfully put down by 

 the Alness District Fishery Board, since to drift with a salmon net inside 

 the limits of an estuary is, by House of Lords decision, to fish by means of 

 a fixed net. In the same way at Thurso, if any of the net is run out and 

 anchored, or if the coble with part of the net out be attached to a mooring 

 (which amounts to the same thing), a fixed engine is at once created. 



I have referred to the Alness fishing at p. 9 of the 23rd Annual Report, 

 Part II., 1904. In the present Report the same question is brought up 

 in another form under the heading Mth. 



Forth (Allan Water). 



In the 22nd Annual Report I made reference to the various dam dyke's 

 of the Allan Water. Since that date, a salmon pass has been erected at 

 the Airthrie Dyke, reference to which will be found in my paper " Salmon 

 Passes," published in the 28th Annual Report^ Part II., Appendix I., p. 11. 



