8 
Appendices to Tenth Annual Report 
The Forth District Board and the Commissioners of Scotch Salmon 
Fisheries, after much trouble and many meetings, at last succeeded in 
making an arrangement by which salmon were enabled to ascend to Loch 
Venachar by the old river channel, and so avoid the totally impracticable 
barrier presented by the embankments and sluices at the head of the new 
cut. 
I have several times visited the Embankment and Sluices at the outlet of 
Loch Venachar, the first time in 1870, along with the late Frank Buckland. 
At that date scarcely any salmon could get up, and in their answers to 
the printed queries issued in 1870 the Forth District Board write as 
follows : — ' The works at the outlet of Loch Venachar totally prevent the 
' passage of fish to a large area of first-rate breeding water. They were 
' erected only a few years ago, but the effect of them has been to render 
? unavailable about 2 miles of spawning ground. On an examination 
' and report made for the Forth District Board, it was stated that only 
' two fish had been seen in the river above the loch during the whole of 
' the spawning season of 1868.' 
Since the above was written, however, matters have much improved, and 
a good many salmon now yearly find their way into Loch Venachar and 
the spawning grounds above, as many as twenty-nine fish having been 
captured in a year in the loch above the embankment. But none of these 
salmon get up by the new cut and the water works' sluices and ladders. 
They all ascend by the old river channel. At the waste-weir leading into 
it on the left bank beyond the sluices, there is an efficient fish-pass, with 
a gradient of 1 in 20, that of the apron of the weir being 1 in 6. Below 
this there are two other weirs, each having a fish-pass with an easy gradi- 
ent in order to facilitate the passage of salmon. If, when the river is in 
flood and the compensation water is given through the sluices, the 
remainder was regularly sent over the waste-weir into the old river chan- 
nel, fish would not have much difficulty in ascending.- But there should 
be some one, in the interests of the Forth District Board, to see that this 
was regularly done. Loch Venachar is a beautiful sheet of water, nearly 
4 miles in length, and upwards of half a mile in maximum width. Besides 
salmon, it contains very fine trout, perch, and large pike. It is connected 
with Loch Achray by a stream upwards of a mile long called the Dubh 
Abhain. Loch Achray is much smaller than Loch Venachar, being only 
a mile and a quarter in length and from 2 to 3 furlongs wide. The 
Achray water flows into it from Loch Katrine. It contains trout, sea- 
trout, pike, and perch. There is no reason why there should not be 
salmon also, as there is no obstruction on the stream between Loch Achray 
and Loch Venachar. But they are rarely caught. The landlord of the 
Trossachs Hotel, however, told me that two were caught in 1890 and two 
in 1891. I walked up the beautiful wooded valley through which the 
Achray water flows from Loch Katrine into Loch Achray. This stream 
is a mile and three-quarters in length, and when in flood is amply sufficient 
in volume to allow salmon to ascend into Loch Katrine. But there is an 
obstruction near the efflux of the river from the loch, in the shape of the 
sluices belonging to the Glasgow Water Works, which effectually prevents 
their upward passage. Between the end of the sluices and the farther or 
left bank of the outflow from Loch Katrine, there is a low dam of massive 
stones, and below that a rocky and broken stretch of stony ground. I 
think that the best way to enable salmon to get up without interfering 
with the sluices would be to make a cut in this dam close to the sluices, 
and to carry it down into the Achray water, opening out into the stream 
below the totally inefficient salmon ladders connected with the sluices. 
If this were done — and it would not be a costly operation — when the 
