28 



Appendices to Seventh Annual Report 



present there are 64 boats employed at the local fishings with crews of over 400 

 men, very hardy enterprising men ; but the industry is now sadly cramped 

 and the lives of the men endangered by the absence of any harbour accommo- 

 dation whatever along the north coast of Sutherland. 



Sea-trout Fishing in Kyle of Durness. — Though the fishing for sea- 

 trout in the salt water of the Kyle of Tongue is good, it is not by any 

 means equal to that in the Kyle of Durness, into which the river Grudie 

 or Dionard, the westmost of the salmon rivers on the north coast of 

 Scotland, flows. The day I arrived at the inn at Durness, 16 sea-trout, 

 weighing 22 lbs., had been brought in ; and, on a previous day, a single rod 

 killed 33 lbs. Even better sport than this was had in the Kyle some eight 

 or nine years ago; one gentleman having four capital days, the worst produc- 

 ing 13 sea-trout, weighing 20 lbs., and the best 40, weighing 68 lbs. 



B<«j-nets near the Grudie. — When I first inspected the Grudie, there 

 were bag-nets in Ballnakill Bay, near its mouth, which, of course, lessened 

 the number of salmon captured by the angling lessees of the river. Before 

 these nets were put on, the fishing in the Grudie was wonderfully good, 

 for a comparatively small river. At that time, the keeper at Gualin 

 House told me he had seen 14 salmon taken and 9 lost by one rod in a single 

 day, and also that he had seen Mr Trevillian, the former lessee, who had 

 the angling on the river for upwards of twenty years, take 8, 10, and 12 

 fish in a day when the river was in good order. He imputed the 

 subsequent falling off in the angling to the placing of the bag-nets too 

 close to the mouth of the river. Now that there are no bag-nets between 

 Loch Emboli and Loch In chard, on the other side of Cape Wrath, the 

 angling on the Grudie should improve rapidly. 



There are several good lochs in the wild country between the west side of 

 the Kyle of Durness and Cape Wrath ; such as Loch Ari-na-bein, Loch Inis- 

 hohar, Loch Keisgag, and some others. All these lochs communicate with 

 the sea by small streams. In the last-named loch, which is about 11 miles 

 from Durness, one gentleman, staying at the hotel while I was there last 

 summer, killed, with the fly, 12 trout averaging 1 lb. weight each. There 

 is no boat on this loch, so that he had to wade in order to reach the fish. 



Loch Craspul. — Close to Durness Hotel there is a loch called Loch 

 Craspul, which has evidently at one time had a communication with the 

 sea, and contains trout as silvery as sea-trout, which might almost be 

 mistaken for land-locked sea-trout. They are shy, and tender in the 

 mouth, and require very delicate tackle and small flies. Some years ago 

 I saw 20 of these trout, the produce of two days' fishing, weighing about 

 30 lbs. These trout, along with the so-called gillaroo trout, found in 

 Loch Mulack Corry on the skirts of Benmore in Assynt, are the most 

 beautiful trout to be found in Sutherland. There are plenty of char in 

 Loch Borley, a loch not far from Loch Craspul, as in many other Suther- 

 land lochs; but, as a rule, they will not rise to the fly. I once killed 3 in 

 Loch Borrolan, near Altnakealgach, while fishing for trout ; but this is 

 rare. There is, however, one small loch of the purest spring water, 2000 

 feet above the sea-level, on the shoulder of Ben Hope, where char take 

 the fly freely, and a small grey fly is said to be the most deadly. The 

 late factor at Tongue House told me that he and his son once killed 6 

 dozen char about herring size, in this lofty and remote mountain tarn in 

 a single day.* 



* They do not seem to have been acquainted with char in this part of Sutherland 

 in the end of last century. For, in the account of the parish of Durness, in the old 



Statistical Account of Scotland, written in 1792, the following passage occurs : 



' Loch Borley affords, in great abundance, a species of trouts called red-bcllics, and in 



Gaelic, Tarragan. They are caught in October when they repair to the shallow 



water to deposit their spawn.' 



