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Appendices to Second Annual Report 



missioners' bye-laws are not to affect them, they are in a great 

 measure useless and unintelligible. The main purpose and object 

 of the Act of 1862 is to interfere with and regulate existing rights 

 of salmon fishings ; and the principal bye-laws drawn up by the 

 Commissioners, and approved by the Secretary of State, interfere 

 with them in a very decided manner — such as those fixing an 

 annual and weekly close time, determining estuary lines, regulating 

 the mesh of nets, the use of dam dykes, and the placing of hecks on 

 lades. The decision of the House of Lords in Johnston v. Stott, 

 above referred to, appears to me to have definitely settled the 

 point that the Tongueland Doachs are really cruives, and the case 

 of Kennedy v. Murray, 8th July 1869, has fixed ' That the Salmon 

 ' Fishery Commissioners, acting under the Act of 1862, have power 

 * to make bye-laws applicable to lades, dams, &c, whether in process 

 ' of being constructed or repaired or not so that, taking these 

 two cases together, it seems to me that we must arrive at the con- 

 clusion that the Doachs at Tongueland ought to be constructed and 

 worked in terms of the bye-law (Schedule F) regulating the con- 

 struction and use of cruives.* 



A very peculiar kind of net, termed a ' Shoulder-net/ is used for 

 taking out salmon from the numerous pools among the rocks at 

 Tongueland, the most productive of which is a large deep hole 

 immediately beneath the ' Little Doach/ termed the 1 Black Pot.' 

 The shoulder-net is a sort of gigantic landing-net. The handle or pole 

 of the net is 24 feet long, and is made of Norway pine. The mouth 

 is nearly semicircular in shape, being 7 feet 3 inches in length, 

 while its breadth in the line of the pole is 5 feet. The net itself 

 is 6 feet deep. This large net is used at night, and is thrown 

 forward into the pools, which it searches thoroughly ; and it is 

 raised by placing the handle in a sort of wooden shoe, which is 

 fastened upon the shoulder of the fisherman. It requires great 

 strength and dexterity, as well as long practice, to become an adept 

 in the use of the shoulder-net. But in experienced hands it is a 

 most deadly weapon. The late John Bichardson, who died a few 

 years ago at the age of seventy, was the most accomplished and suc- 

 cessful shoulder-net fisherman that ever lived, and he has been suc- 

 ceeded by his son, a strapping young fellow 6 feet high, who is 

 said to be a promising fisherman. John Bichardson kept a book in 

 which he entered regularly all the fish he captured with the 

 shoulder-net. Besides his regular wages, he got a penny for every 

 salmon and a halfpenny for every grilse he took. In four of the 

 best^years his captures were as follows : — 



* It should be stated that the owner of the Doachs denies that the decision of the 

 House of Lords definitely settled that the Doachs were cruives, and maintains that the 

 decision points in quite the opposite direction, in so far as it withdrew or deleted that 

 part of the Interlocutor of the Court of Session which found that the Doachs or cruive 

 dike and boxes, &c, were to be so formed, constructed, and fixed as to answer the 

 purposes of a cruive fishery, and agreeable to the practice of these fishings in the north 

 of Scotland where cruives have been regulated according to law ; and the Lords 

 further order that the case be remitted back to the Court of Session to give precise 

 directions for the form, and construction, and position of the dike, boxes, inscales, 

 &c. This was done, and the owner affirms that the Doachs have ever since been 

 worked and regulated in conformity with the directions then given by the Court of 

 Session. 



