306 
Finxock and Sea-Trout. 
In the rivers—tide and nether reaches—along 
the whole of the east coast of Scotland, there can 
hardly at the present time, and for a while to 
come, be used for either finnock or adult sea- 
trout better flies than March Brown, Teal and 
Green (silk body). Teal and Scarlet (silk body). 
Hare Lug, Saltoun, lied Quill,Olive Quill, and Gray 
Quill. The three Quills are noted killers when 
the water is low and clear. For the sea-trout 
elsewhere in Scotland several of the flies 
inentioned in this list are no doubt good; but in 
the range suitable for loch and sea-trout appearing 
above, there are patterns which suit much better 
the taste of the sea-trout in nearly every locality, 
and very especially the Highland localities. 
Among the artificial lures used with much 
success in tidal reaches for the capture of finnock, 
and adult sea-trout, the former especially, may be 
mentioned : the clear Devon, the various coloured 
tubes, the different sorts of creepers and dandies, 
the Wriggler or Dulce-winger, the Stand-by, and 
the Lnionist,” the latter an old lure, under a 
new title, composed of a Stewart tackle tinselled 
with silver, and enveloped on either side by a 
narrow longish grey cock hackle. These several 
lures are, however, not of much account after 
April, but earlier in the season they are wonder- 
again in autumn in the localities 
where they are severally much in use. 
About the present time of the year, trolling with 
the sand-eel in such famous localities as the Kyles 
of Tongue, and Durness, gets to be good, and, 
conditions keeping favourable, continues to 
improve until about the middle of June, after 
M'hich—as nothing is certain about it—it may or 
may not continue of much excellence for a period 
of six weeks or thereby. 
THE FISHING GAZETTE 
Overscaig Hotel, writes :—“ I will gladly adver¬ 
tise as usual, and take in the Gazette, and also 
send you all special notices, for it is worth doing 
to your paper. The Gazette is the most popular 
that comes my way. I hope if you have a 
sketcher in the Xorth that he will come here, 
for an artist would get lots of splendid loch and 
river scenes in this district. Its being rather 
out of the artists’ route one has never yet 
chanced to come here, so there is a treat for a 
good man such as you have been sending round, 
lots of rare grand stuff.” 
By Mac. 
The Duke of Sutherland and the Earl of Cro¬ 
marty have goue to Dunrobin, where his grace is 
engaged with estate matters, of which the angling 
and salmon fishing form a very large part. 
Both kelts and smolts are now extremely keen 
on getting seaward. Every day more and more 
young salmon are taking on the smolt dress, and 
dropping down river slowly. The little moves of 
the water, which have been had in several of the 
pvers, would appear to do admirably in facilitat¬ 
ing progress. The kelts, however, require more 
water, but unquestionably they are now ripe to 
go. Their shoaling was observed with interest 
by anglers on many rivers last week, when there 
was a slight increase of the volume of water, but 
unfortunately this lasted for too short a time to 
permit of a wholesale exodus. 
seaboard man writes : 
—“ Mr. Meinnes, Lochmaddv, has leased, and will 
take on the business of. Tongue Hotel with the 
fashings at the coming May term. There is no 
good salmon fishing in our northern salmon rivers 
at present, for the reason the weather is too 
brighC still, and dry. The Xaver, Borgie, Halla- 
dale, Hope, and Forss are all doing poorly com¬ 
paratively. I am told that in the Sandside burns 
—mere rills—where the salmon fry and year-olds 
have been turned in for the last few years, there 
are a great many smolts ready to go to the sea, 
in some of the lower poolets regular shoals of 
them. Saturday, the 1.5th, Colonel Phillpotts, 
House rod, got seven fine fish 
off the Forss river. This take is the best that 
has come to my knowledge for some time. 
Grouse are nesting early and having splendid 
weather for it; so far no signs of disease in 
.Sutherland or Caithness. The continued fine 
weather will make loch fishing three weeks earlier 
than usual. This can be foreseen in the fact that 
already there is any amount of insect life about. 
1 esterday the trout were rising freely at the 
natural fly on the lochs around Melvich. Very 
few sea.fish are being got off the north coast at 
present; indeed, scarcely sufficient for the local 
fishermen to bait their lobster creels with. The 
catches of lobsters are very fair all along.’’ 
Mr. Duncan Mackay, mine genial host of 
Last week sport was grand with finnock in 
the nether and tidal reaches of most of the rivers 
running out along the east coast of Scotland 
between the Tweed and the Xess. On the whole, 
the week proved the best one that has been of 
the early season nearly all round. A little fresh 
moved the rivers and put the finnock keen on 
the edge, but a day or two after they were found 
to nearly all have cleared out of the nether 
reaches (which are non-tidal) of a number of the 
rivers. From a state of actually steering with 
fish to a state about completely fishless, the 
finnock reaches other than tidal of at least half 
a dozen rivers practically changed in one day, 
so sudden was the transition. The tidal waters 
of most of the east coast rivers will continue for 
some time longer to give fair finnock fishing, 
but for the early season this sort of sport has to 
all intents and purposes gone past in the non- 
tidal lengths of all the Scotch rivers of the east 
coast south of the Spey. Xathless there ought 
still, and before the summer comes, to be a lot 
of good finnock fishing had on Lossie, Spey, 
Findhorn, Xess and Beauly. 
Sport on the Awe has improved latterly. This 
week a number of fish have been killed, several 
of them on the Taynuilt Hotel stretch. This is 
good for the Awe, so early. 
This is now the best time of the year for salmon 
angling on upper Spey, which always between 
the middle of April and the end of May, yields 
most sport of the whole river; but there continues 
still to be a great cry for rain. Mr. Macdonald, 
of the Grant Arms, Grantown, has secured a first- 
rate stretch of water which would yield good sport 
if only conditions would turn more auspicious, j 
The Lochy Spean angling is progressing, but 
not for its early days of the season so brilliantly 
as usual. A decided change of the weather 
would give it a great hitch-up. 
In respect of salmon angling, the Tweed is 
still doing miserably, as also are the rivers of 
Ayrshire and the Solway. Independent of the 
dry weather the desperate netting itself is quite 
enough to ” floor ” the angling in the rivers of 
these southern parts of Scotland. 
The first prize in the Perthshire Club competi¬ 
tion held on Loch Leven on Tuesday, when eleven 
members competed, was taken by Mr. G. Pople 
with ten trout, 81bs. 4ioz. 
[Apeil 29, 1893 
The trouting for the splendid large yellow 
trout has this week advanced in a marked degree, 
on the best of the early trout waters of Scotland, 
to wit: Don, Deveron, Findhorn, Dean, Ythan, 
Tay, &c. _ 
Salmon angling on Oykel, Cassley, and Shin 
continues to jog along. On the Shin some days 
it proves very good. _ 
The Tweed to the front! It has beat all other 
rivers in Scotland this year, in respect that it is 
from it that the first grilse of the season comes. 
I just hear that “ on Friday last the first grilse of 
the year was got, its weight 2|lb. The appear¬ 
ance of grilse this year is therefore earlier than 
usual.” 
Anglers have had good finnock and sea-trout 
fishing on the free waters of the Xess, at Inver¬ 
ness, these last three weeks. 
The Invercauld Arms Hotel water of the Dee 
at Ballater is keeping up its record, and, despite 
the low state the Dee is now in, there is being 
got on it an average of four fish a day by each of 
the four rods. Seventy-one were killed for the 
week ending Saturday last. 
The pioneers of the summer run of sea-trout 
are reported to have already got into Loch 
Lomond. 
The Perth Angling Club has a dandy presi¬ 
dent and a young vice-president, so I learn the 
punsters have it. Probably this is because Mr. 
Dandy is president, and Mr. Young vice-president. 
Colin Gunn writesThe genial Professor 
has been out of late doing wonders on the Brora 
free lower beat, astonishing quite the salmon rods 
irom Balnacoil and Gordonbush, who, experts 
though they are, have been toiling all day for 
nothing. This is descending to the Scriptural 
of things, but the genial Professor who, 
though a man of peace, can become, and is by 
profession, a man of war, still keeps in the 
ascending scale.” 
^ McBouncer writes :—“ In my last communica¬ 
tion I gave you an example or two of the indis¬ 
criminate manner in which some Highland gillies 
use the longest words they can get hold of when 
speaking English. While at it I may as well 
give another, as related to me by Captain B-w, 
who was an eye witness. A few years ago the 
Captain happened! to be sea-fishing on Loch 
Linnhe, near Fort William, and had for boatman 
or gillie, one Peter-, a stalwart Skyeman, 
and the other Ewen, an equally muscular 
Lochaber man. In the course of the day the two 
men quarrelled, and fumed away at each other in 
their native Gaelic—a language of which the 
Captain did not understand a single syllable. 
M hen opposite Connaglen House, the summer 
residence of the Earl of Morton, the quarrel 
reached such a pitch that the two men stood in 
the boat with an oar each as weapons. Fearing 
the result of a scuffle in such a small craft, the 
Captain ordered them to row him ashore at once, 
whereupon Peter turned round, and with an 
apologetic wave of the hand cooly replied, ‘ Sit 
doon quaite. Captain B-w, there’s no fear of 
you, we may hev a fecht oorsels, but we’ll do 
nothing interrogatory to you.’ The gillies, 
however, realised their position. Hostilities were 
suspended, and rowing was resumed. All the 
same they ‘ nursed their wrath to keep it warm,’ 
and in the evening settled their dispute at the 
back of the Caledonian Hotel, where they made 
each other (juite' unpresentable for some time 
thereafter. The exact meaning of the word 
interrogatory ’ as used by Peter is not yet 
known. Captain B-w’s opinion was that the 
gillie had heard that word and also the word 
‘ derogatory,’and got them mixed up. Mistakes 
of that sortare of daily occurrence ; it is not long 
since I was accosted on the public road by a man 
who asked me ‘Did you saw Shon MacLennon 
going the way of Ballachladdich riding on a 
philosophy ? ’ Although he pronounced the 
word ‘philosophy’ quite correctly, I knew he 
meant velocepede, and I am equally certain that 
if he had occasion to use the word ‘ philosophy ’ 
in its proper sense he would have given it a 
different pronounciation.” 
Mr. Archibald Harper writes from the 
Thurso:—“ Still no rain. The river is as low as 
it can be. Anglers’ high hopes of a good spate 
in April, as in former years, have been blasted, 
and this month is to finish as it began, with the 
poorest sport on record. Whatever happens now, 
the leeway cannot be made up. The sport for 
April is far under any previous record. I allowed 
the fry in the rearing ponds away on Friday. 
They were a nice healthy lot. Some of them 
were just arriving at the smolt stage, 5in. long, 
while the greater number were from 3|in. to 4iin. 
When the pond was run dry, the bottom was 
found to be alive with insect life, thus showing it 
to be well adapted for the rearing of fry. Does 
the gentleman who writes you about the otter 
consider mine to be the heaviest on record ? 
101b. off for waterlogging! I caught one alive 
241b., but this one was much larger. An angling 
association is being formed in Caithness, the 
members of which will have access to some of 
the lochs.” _ 
Our Speyside correspondent writes:—‘‘Anglers 
are enjoying delightful weather, such as visitors 
