160 
THE FISHING GAZETTE 
[^[arch 4, 1893 
THE SPRING SALMON RIVERS OF 
SCOTLAND. 
AS THEY ARE. 
(Continued from page 133.) 
By W. Murdoch. 
For many years past the strength of the run of 
spring fish in the Spey has been steadily on the 
decrease. For this no other reason than the 
severity of the Duke’s netting can be advanced 
with any degree or show of truth. With the 
diminishing strength of the run, there, of course, 
have been fewer fish found to make their way to 
the upper waters for the purpose of reproduc¬ 
tion. 
The Spey cannot be called particularly early; 
yet if used in a manner calculated to allow the 
fish of the different migrations to get in good 
numbers forward to the sjiawning grounds, it, no 
doubt, like the Aberdeenshire Dee, would soon 
become earlier. As it is a good many fish every 
year run inland before the commencemtnt of the 
netting season, but from the water of the river 
j angling-water, beset with innumerable hazards to 
1 test the skill of the angler, and flowing through 
! river scenery unsurpassed in Scotland, the lovely 
I Findhorn is practically of little use for sport 
I with the noble Salmo' salar until after the nets go 
! off and the short autumn season or time meant 
j specially for the rods comes round. In pro- 
i ductiveness the river has gone back in an alarm- 
j ing manner, and little wonder, since for many , 
i long years it has been murderously used by the ' 
i netting in it as well as all round its coast line on j 
I either side of its mouth, which has caught not ' 
only practically the whole of the fish to come 
forward during the weekly netting time, but has 
rendered the slap or weekly close time about 
utterly valueless to the proprietors of all the rod¬ 
fishing stretches beyond the farthest inland river 
net. What I have said I find is more than amply 
corroborated by Mr. Archibald Young, who has 
stated in a report to the Scotch Fishery Board : 
“ The lower waters between Sluie pool and the 
sea are severely fished by net and coble, and 
Burghead Bay, to the east of the river’s mouth, i 
literally bristles with a combination of stake and 
bag-nets ranged line beyond line all along the 
curve of the bay; while, on the west side, the fi.ved i 
of great celebrity. It appears by a letter dated 
i June 7, 1648, from the Earl of Moray to his 
Countess, that ‘ in one night, on the pool of Sluie 
alone, 1300 salmon were taken; and at one 
draught six-and-twenty scores.’ About thirty- 
six years ago, 360 salmon were caught in the 
same pool in one day. But the number now taken 
in all the pools connected with the net fishing 
there does not now average about 700 yearly. 
“ If the wider estuary, in favour of which the 
Barons of Exchequer expressed their opinions on 
July 23,1778, were adopted instead of the present 
more limited one, there is little doubt that the 
river fishings would be very much improved in 
the course of a few years. There would be a more 
equal distribution of salmon among the pro¬ 
prietors in the district, and the general take 
would not be diminished. 
“ The sea coast of the district of the River 
Findhorn is twenty-one miles in length, and on 
that stretch of coast there are 43 fly and 92 bag- 
nets, or altogether 137 fixed nets.” 
The Ness, unlike the Spey and the Findhorn, 
possesses from the months of December to March 
inclusive, a temperature many degrees higher 
than is common in the rivers of Scotland during 
MOY ON THE FINDHORN 
being so cold they make but slow progress at that 
silinost none have pushed beyond 
tuG fartliGst inland, point of thG JDuIcg's ten or 
twelve miles of netting, ere the netters, from the 
yearly close time having expired, commence to 
ply the nets, "which Gxcept in very high waters 
prevent the progress farther inland of nearly the 
whole lot. This is exactly, in a few words, the 
position of affairs with regard to the Spey. 
Little wonder it is then that this grand river is 
so poor for spring salmon angling. 
1 next spring salmon river is 
the 1 indhorn. Like the Spey, it runs down 
extremely cold water early in the year, and 
though fish enter it before the close time has 
them, indeed, push inland beyond 
all the netting stations, or rather, I should say, 
ever get beyond them, for on Feb. 11 netting 
at several places commences, and at some or 
other of these places it is farther inland than 
almost any of the fish have got. Then con¬ 
tinuing constantly and fiercely throughout the 
whole season it intercepts not only the lion’s share I 
but almost the whole head of fish of spring and ' 
of summer, as well as of early autumn. Con- 
sequently, in its great range of naturally splendid 
nets are almost equally numerous.” As might be 
expected under these circumstances, the lower pro¬ 
prietors have the lion’s share of the fishings. In 
18/'0, a witness stated to Mr. Buckland and myself, 
that one salmon for every two miles of river was 
about the average take during the netting season; 
yet, at the same time, an old keeper who had 
fished on the Findhorn for thirty years, said 
that he remembered twenty - five years ago 
killinsr ten salmon in a forenoon, above Dulsie 
Bridge, whereas now he could not kill as many 
in a year. Since then, however, the angling has 
somewhat improved. The fishings at the long 
pool at Slnie were once amazingly productive, as 
the following paragraph, taken from the 13th 
volume of the new “ Statistical Account of Scot¬ 
land, ’ will show. It occurs in the description of 
the parish of Edenkillie, which is dated February 
1842 : “There is a considerable salmon fishing 
within the parish at Sluie, the property of the 
Earl of Moray. Four men are employed there to I 
fish with a boat and draught nets the Sluie pool j 
and two other pools near to it, with two or three | 
more considerably farther down the river. 
Before salmon fishing near the sea was so well 
understood as it is now, the fishery at Sluie was 
these months. It may seem paradoxical to say 
that although it has a splendid run of early (or 
as actually they are, wiuter) fish, it yet is not an 
early salmon river. This is accounted for partly 
from its being only a few miles in length, and 
partly by the temperature of its water. 
As I have shown already to demonstrate a fact 
which must be known by careful observers, 
salmon make but slow progress in very cold 
water—in fact, their swimming pace for some 
nme and for some distance after they leave the 
sea, is entirely regulated by temperature, except 
in so far as the physical formation of the streams 
have an influence. In the case of the Ness this 
will be well understood. The river never freezes, 
since it has for its constant volume a thermal 
supply—the overflow of Loch Ness, whose tem¬ 
perature is always very much higher in spring than 
that of any river in Scotland. The run of fish 
into the Ness is very early, and, except during 
very long tracts of drought and frost, the volume 
of water is more than ample for enabling them 
to push forward into Loch Ness. The early or 
winter fish are very large in size, averaging most 
years from 181b. to 201b. By local observers it is 
stated that under favourable conditions they 
