16 



Appendices to Tv:enty-si:dh Annual Report 



If the fixed nets are so placed as to capture undue numbers of 

 those grilse — and it is the tacksman's endeavour to capture as 

 many of them as he can — the valuable spring stock of next season 

 is reduced. Even under natural causes grilse may fail, and conse- 

 quently small springers may fail; under conditions in which 

 unwise netting is superadded there is risk that such failure be 

 turned into bankruptcy. But in this connection it may be pointed 

 out that if the hatcheries of the Helmsdale really do what is 

 claimed for them by those who advocate hatcheries, the stock of 

 grilse belonging to the Helmsdale should be independent of the 

 unfavourable conditions just referred to. In like manner the 

 stock of small spring fish should be more constant in the Helms- 

 dale than in neighbouring rivers where no hatcheries exist. The 

 hatcheries at Kinbrace and Torrish. taken together, treat about a 

 million eggs annually. But the grilse of 1907 were short in 

 numbers, as the small springers of the present season have proved 

 to be. Those fish would be hatched in the winter of 1904-05. I 

 find that the ova secured during that winter and laid down in the 

 hatcheries is reported as 985.000. There does not seem to be any 

 argument in support of the hatcheries here. 



Thurso. 



An important alteration in the conditions of the Thurso river 

 fishings has recently been brought about by Sir Tollemache 

 Sinclair, who has the rights over the entire river. Results have 

 for a considerable number of years been slowly but steadily de- 

 clining-. Since 1863 the quinquennial averages are 714. 760. 744. 

 438, 490, 486, 357, 225, and 324. 



The marked drop occurs about 1880. These figures represent 

 spring angling alone, for which the Thurso has in the past been 

 most famous. No river netting has taken place for years, but the 

 nets close to the river mouth are believed to have caused too 

 severe a tax upon the stock offish, more especially upon the grilse. 

 The Thurso, like other northern rivers, depends upon the grilse 

 forming its stock of small spring fish the year following. The 

 prescribed estuary of the river is only of 400 yards radius from 

 the river mouth, and close to this on the west side the Pennyland 

 nets used to be set. These and the Scrabster nets fished the whole 

 season through, while the nets set on the more exposed parts of 

 the coast outside of Thurso Bay were generally only put in the 

 water when the grilse were expected in early summer. 



It has been deemed advisable to give the river the benefit of a 

 larger estuaiy, to deepen the shallows near the mouth, which 

 hindered the ascent of fish when the river was low, and to erect a 

 dam dyke and fish pass at Loch More, out of which the river flows. 

 Sir Tollemache has not only taken over the nets of Thurso Bay, 

 but has leased the nets at Holborn Head further west and the 

 nets belonging to the Crown to the east. Those nets are not to 

 be fished during the lease, so that the unnetted area will extend 

 for nine miles west of the river mouth — the important direction, as 

 various indications seem to show — and four miles east of the river 

 mouth, 13 miles in all. 



