Februart 25, 1893] 
THE FISHING GAZETTE 
133 
almost always a significant meaning attaching to 
the establishment of a hatchery on a salmon 
river, or to the entire or partial withdrawal of 
the netting. To establish a hatchery, or to 
partially or entirely withdraw the nets, according 
as is w'arranted, is a laudable step taken, but the 
policy which leads to the necessity for it must, 
in all truthfulness, be said to be quite the reverse. 
The severity of the netting, made all the more 
disastrous in its effects by artificial barriers 
retarding the ascent of fish, has brought our 
salmon fisheries into their present deplorable 
condition ; but while this is beginning to be seen 
by some proprietors who are now taking steps to 
avert still further disaster, it is a matter of great 
concern to all intelligent observers that the vast 
body of proprietors, still so little capable of 
iudging for themselves, are always continuing to 
accept the netting lessees’ advice, and to yield 
to the clamour of the working netters. For one 
proprietor that foresees the evil to come and 
strives to avert it, fifty at least, apprehending 
nothing, are quite content to let matters take 
their svving—ihe fish their chance against the 
netters. True, on large rivers, there are not a 
few proprietors who have foresight enough, and 
are possessed of sound acquaintance with salmon 
matters ; but those parties, though anxiously 
inclined to do something for the fisheries, yet do 
not move in consequence of receiving no 
encouragement from their neighbours. 
And this is a state of matters not local 
but general. Its very existence entirely 
prevents the taking of any steps whatever 
thatwould prove beneficial to the fisheries, 
and not, indeed, until all parties see that 
their interests are thoroughly identical— 
which unquestionably is the case—and 
not conflicting, as at present they regard 
them, will anything really good outside 
national legislation be done for the fisheries 
of large rivers in which, perhaps, dozens 
of persons as proprietors and scores as 
tenants, from the well-informed to the 
poorly versed in salmon fishery mainten¬ 
ance, have an interest. To avert the ruin 
of a fishery which belongs entirely to one 
person, can easily be done if thao person 
feels inclined, and with the wherewithal 
in cash available it ought to be equally 
easy for the same to be done by the pro¬ 
prietors of the upper and middle districts 
—even of large rivers such as the Spey — 
combining to buy up the netting rights of 
the proprietor or proprietors whose nets 
reap, practically, the whole of the season’s 
head of fish. 
On account of its length, its volume, its 
many hundreds of pools, perfect holes for 
salmon, and from the fact that it never 
becomes too low for the fish taking in the 
swift streams, the Spey, by comparison 
with most Scotch rivers, has possibilities 
for salmon-angling which puts it far ahead 
and are simply wonderful. But, alas, alas, 
it is a grand river, naturally productive 
in a wonderful degree, simply ruined for 
the rods early in the spring and for the whole 
season throughout, everywhere along its extent 
terribly crippled for sport by the netting which has 
also, as could only be expected, greatly fallen off. 
This has led the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, 
who practically farms the whole river by his nets, 
to erect and maintain a splendid hatchery near 
the village of Fochabers, to save, if possible, his 
fishery from becoming still less productive. 
Quite a controversial spate raged for weeks in 
consequence of the establishment of this hatchery. 
In the daily press letters followed letters in quick 
succession, and all on the face of them bore to be 
the production of the fiery Celt whose wordy 
attacks too often flow more readily than his cash, 
even when cash, not words, is the real essential. 
One letter appeared blaming the Duke all round 
and saying that he was entirely to blame for 
matters having come to such a pass. I confess 
to not seeing the fairness or justice of blaming 
the Duke for what he is seeking to do. It is 
rather for what he has done in the past that he 
is deserving of blame. Yet, if it be true that on 
different occasions he has offered to treat with 
the other proprietors as a body, and that the pro¬ 
posals which he submitted for their acceptance 
in re the buying up of his cruive and net fishings 
to throw open the river to the free passage of 
salmon from the tideway upward, w^ere point 
blank rejected, I fail to see what right anyone 
has to throw blame wholesale on his Grace or to 
interfere with what he is now doing, which is 
done solely by himself and is judged by him to 
be for the real benefit of the whole riv-er. Un¬ 
doubtedly he has pushed the fishing far too hard, 
the necessity for the hatchery being incontro¬ 
vertible testimony to this. But when it is con¬ 
sidered how effectively the cruives and the 
netting in the river have all along been the 
means of keeping the fish from getting forward 
to the waters of the other proprietors I feel in¬ 
clined to stigmatize the Spey proprietors as, with 
but few exceptions, a lazy lot, wholly lacking in 
enterprise and carping without cause about a 
state of matters which, although utterly bad, 
they have all along never been without the power 
to redress by means of negotiation with his 
Grace. Last year it was reported that they had 
employed an expert to consider the whole matter 
in all its bearings. Fiddlesticks ! This expert’s 
name never appeared, and I now doubt much 
if actually he was an entity. Theoretical 
humbugs called in to adjudicate on such 
matters are worse than useless. They often give 
advice which is unsound and leads to negotiations 
being broken off, and ihe feeling between the 
parties interested accentuated. What the Spey 
although the fish caught far inland would most 
likely not command a great market price, yet the 
increase of their numbers from the Duke’s netting 
in the ten or twelve miles of river being 
abandoned might prove a temptation to thpse 
possessing the rights, to net oftener than they 
now do, and thus rob the river and the other pro¬ 
prietors of fish which would spring from those 
early and summer runners that would spawn in 
the river and tributaries high up, as far, and even 
farther, than Loch Inch, of which we give an 
illustration showing this expansion of the river 
in summer at the hour of sunset. 
THE DEAN OF WINCHESTER. 
Anglers owe so much to the kindness of the 
Very Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Dean of Winchester, 
that we have much pleasure in giving his portrait. 
It was greatly owing to the assistance given by 
the Dean that we now have a statue of Izaak 
Walton in the great screen, and a memorial tablet 
to the late Francis Francis. It is also not long 
since Dr. Kitchin received a deputation of anglers 
from the Gresham Angling Society and personally 
conducted them over the cathedral. The Editor 
of the Illustrated Ohurch News, who kindly lends 
us the illustration, says, “There was a 
time when every English clergyman was 
supposed to be a scholar and a gentleman ; 
the two are combined in Dean Kitchin in 
their highest perfection .... No one 
is a more welcome figure in Winchester, 
and his long swinging strides as he takes 
his daily constitutional, attract the notice, 
not of mere curiosity, but of universally 
expressed friendly feeling.’’ As we have 
already acknowledged more than once, we 
can bear testimony to the great courtesy of 
the Dean during the long correspondence 
involved in the Walton statue affair. 
THE DEAN OF WINCHESTER. 
upper and middle district proprietors ought to 
do, is to get two or three practical men—having an 
understanding of both rod and net fishing, and of 
the habits of the salmon—to go into the whole 
question thoroughly and report thereon. No 
doubt every facility would be granted by his 
Grace for proving the value of the netting 
intended to be bought up. To have the cruives 
removed, and all the river net fishing from within 
a mile of the sea bought off, and security also 
given at the weekly slap by the Duke’s netters 
and lessees along the coast must be strictly 
observed; these, I think, seem the principal 
points to be bargained for between his Grace and 
the other proprietors in order to secure great im¬ 
provement in the angling as well as large increase 
of the head of fish native to the river. But 
arrangements additional to the bargain, and 
beneficial to both contracting parties, might also 
be made for the erection and up keep of hatcheries 
and the leasing to the other proprietors, or to 
anglers from a distance for spring and summer 
angling, of the many miles of fishery belonging to 
his Grace from which the netting would be with¬ 
drawn. 
Unfortunately, there are netting rights on the 
Spey farther inland—very far inland, indeed—and 
these also would have to be dealt with, for, 
The Spey Fishing Rights Case. —Judg¬ 
ment in this case, as briefly reported in 
last week’s Fishing Gazette, was pronounced 
on Thursday week by Lord Kyllachy, in 
the Court of Session, in favour of the 
pursuer, Mrs. Kinloch Grant, of Arndilly, 
&c.; the defender, Mr. Henry, exi-i-ema!', 
who really represented the public, being 
interdicted with expenses. The whole case 
seemed to rest on the fact of whether the 
navigability o^a river makes it public, and 
on the contention of the defender that it 
was immaterial whether the river was tidal 
or non-tidal at the part in question. As it 
was admitted by the defence that the river 
at the point in question was not tidal, His 
Lordship said it was hopeless to maintain 
the latter contention as there had been 
repeated decisions to the effect that “ fresh¬ 
water rivers, of what kind soever, do of 
common right belong to the owners of the 
soil adjacent,’’ and that in such cases the 
right of the public to fish had been negatived 
repeatedly. As to its navigability from Kingussie 
downwards, it was not denied, but this fact, the 
judge said, did not imply that the river is public ; 
on the contrary, the judges of the House of Lords 
rule that the only public rivers are those which, 
being both tidal and navigable, are truly parts of 
the sea, and in which, accordingly,as in the sea, the 
property of the solum is in tbe Crown, and the 
right to fish in the public. Proof was therefore 
disallowed. The decision naturally aroused con¬ 
siderable popular excitement all along Speyside.. 
and more particularly in and around about 
Rothes, which is near the point in dispute- 
The Spey case was in many respects like 
those test cases on the river Thames, in which 
parties representing the public, or claiming to- 
do so, have endeavoured to prove that the fish¬ 
ing rights were not private, but every case has- 
gone the way of the Spey case, and confirmed the 
rights of riparian owners on non-tidal waters. 
Fortunately, in Scotland, riparian owners are, as 
a rule, generous in giving permission for brown 
trout fishing. 
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