6 
AppeTidices to Ninth Annual Report 
dam about 4 feet in height, so as to raise the water on the face of the 
main fall, and form a large pool at the foot of it. If this were done — 
and the cost would be but trifling — I have no doubt that salmon would 
be able to reach Loch Frisa when the river was in such a state as to in- 
duce them to run. But, as supplementary to this opening up of the fall, 
I would venture to suggest that salmon fry should be put into some of 
the feeders of Loch Frisa, as when these grew up into smolts, and went 
down to the sea, natural instinct would induce them to return to the 
streams where they had been bred. 
I returned to the falls the day after I had inspected them, in order 
to meet one of the proprietors interested in having Loch Frisa oi)ened 
up. I pointed out to him that a transverse dam should be nuide above 
the falls across to the right bank, so as to prevent the water from going 
over the perpendicular rock on the right bank, and to divert all the 
water into the rapid on the left bank ; also that a subsidiary dam should 
be made across the narrow part of the stream, opposite to where some 
palings come down to the edge of the burn, in a line with a wall ; also 
that it would be advisable to pool the shallow, stony, streamy part of 
the burn between the falls and where it emerges fiom a patch of wood- 
land. I farther suggested that it was possible that salmon at present, 
instead of ascending the Ledmore Burn, went up the larger stream of the 
Aros, above the junction of the Aros and the Ledmore Burn, and that it 
might be desirable, with the consent of the upper proprietors on the Aros, 
to put a heck or grating on the Aros, above the junction, with the view 
of diverting ascending fish into the Ledmore Burn, and so into Loch 
Frisa. The gentleman, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the falls, 
told me that the largest yellow trout ever caught in Loch Frisa, so far 
as he knew, weighed 2 lbs. The trout are in general small, but of fine 
quality and flavour. He once killed a sea trout of 3^ lbs. in Loch 
Frisa, but he has never seen nor caught a salmon in it. He, however, 
once heard a very old man say that he had killed salmon in it in his 
youth. It is somewhat strange that the Ordnance Gazetteer^ under the 
head of Loch Frisa (Frisa), states that ' it contains salmon, grilse, and 
' trout in abundance.'* 
From the falls I walked down the whole course of the Ledmore Burn to 
its junction with the Aros, and from thence to where the Aros joins the 
sea. Both the Aros and the Ledmore Burn are perfectly pure and unpol- 
luted, and have abundance of good spawning ground. It is strange, 
therefore, that salmon do not strive to get into the grand natural reservoir 
of Loch Frisa. There are only two obstructions of any consequence in 
their way. One on the Aros, about a mile above the old bridge near the 
sea, where there is a fall, and where a broad flat rock with some bushes 
growing on its down stream face, divides the fall. But, on either side of 
this rock, salmon can easily get up, when the river is in such a state as to 
induce them to run. Above this the only other obstruction is the fall on 
the burn behind Ledmore Farm-house, already fully described, which an 
outlay of £20 or £25 would make easily passable. 
I have received answers to the printed queries from ^laclaiue of 
Maclalne^^^"^ Lochbuie, who, besides being a large proprietor of salmon fisheries in 
Lochbuie Mull, is an experienced and successful pisciculturist. 
about salmon He states that in his district 2600 salmon were caught in fixed nets 
RIuiT^^^^ and 30 by rods in 1890. The heaviest salmon caught by nets was 
* Since the above was in print, I have learned from one unimpeachable witness, well 
acquainted with the district, that he once saw a salmon taken out of the Ledmore 
Burn above the Falls, and between them and Loch Frisa ; and on the same occasion 
he saw another salmon run from the burn into the loch. But this is very rare. 
