June 3, 1893] 
THE FISHING GAZETTE 
407 
several hours one evening on Loch Errochd, and 
an hour or two one morning, and six hours’ 
fishing of three rods on an entirely different loch, 
on another day. If irresponsible people like 
editors or landlords of inns will insist upon 
advertising their fishing, contrary to the wishes 
of their guests, it is rather hard that they should 
be quoted.” For all the injury they have done 
him, Mr. Brown could surely afford to let down 
editors and landlords of inns a little more softly, 
and not just brand them the greatest sinners of 
all. If “ irresponsible,” it is difficult to see how 
they can justly be blamed for their actions. 
As proof of the dreadful state of matters 
piscatorial, I hear from the Lochy and Spean 
that: “We are still crying for water. There is 
nothing at all doing in the way of fishing, and 
to bring sport about now it will require a strong 
flood, as the rivers are getting very foul in 
the bottom. The Lochy and Spean are the 
largest, best cared for, and best fishing late spring 
and summer rivers of the West of Scotland, and 
this year full six weeks of their best time have 
gone past with the result that next to no fish have 
been caught on them.” 
OuK Deveron correspondent writes : “ During 
the past fortnight a good deal of rain has fallen 
along the valley of the Deveron. The volume of 
water in the river has therefore, to a considerable 
extent, been augmented, allowing fish to get to 
the sea more readily, and in this way acting as a 
check on the progress of disease, which in the 
lower reaches had, during April and the first part 
of May, done a great deal of injury, several 
hundreds of fish being weekly taken out and 
buried. There has been during the past month 
some excellent angling days experienced ; that is 
so far as the weather conditions are concerned, 
but all along the course of the river little else is 
to be heard except grave complaints of the 
exceptional scarcity of fish. At the sea stations, 
and on the lower stretch of the river from the 
dykes to the sea, fish have been so crowded that 
disease became rampant. Anglers are therefore 
exceedingly dissatisfied with the results of the 
season. As a matter of fact little has hitherto 
been done in angling on the river for salmon 
until the nets are removed in August. To improve 
sport on the upper reaches, various proposals 
of a definite kind have, I understand, been laid 
before the Duke of Fife, but as yet no under¬ 
standing has been come to on the subject. It is 
certainly in the interests of all lovers of sport 
that artificial barriers, placed in the water so as 
to almost effectually stop progress of fish up the 
river, should be removed, and it is in this direc¬ 
tion that proposals have been laid before His 
Grace. The first grilse for the season was got on 
20th ult., in a bag-net at Whitehills, about two 
miles west from the estuary of the Deveron. 
Last year grilse made their appearance about a 
month earlier on this part of the coast. 
The following, received from Johnnie Suther¬ 
land, the renowned gillie, indicates that sport 
at Durness on the Kyle Avith sea-trout, and on 
Loch Crosspuil, with the gamesome silvery trout 
(land-locked sea-trout P) has begun very well 
indeed. He says, “Mr. Swanson, Glasgow, had 
on May 'lo, eight sea-trout, 101b.; and on 26th, 
ten sea-trout, l-51b., largest 2lb., off the Kyle; on 
evening of 26th, seven trout, 81b., and on evening 
of 27tb, eight trout, 111b., largest 211b., off 
Crosspuil. The best flies for this month are 
Yellow Dun, Evening Dun, Bed Spinner, Coch-y- 
bondhu, and House-fly. I think a lot of good has 
been done for Crosspuil this season by the 
protection of its feeding streams during the 
spawning time. The Kyle is in grand form 
this year, with better banks and channels than 
usual in the best places. Mr. Swanson got his big 
trouts at ten o’clock at night with the House-fly. 
I was speaking to Neil Campbell, Gualin, the 
other day; he has great faith in you; very nice 
lad, Neil.” ' 
I A MAGNii'iCENT sea-trout of 111b, perfectly 
symmetrical in every way, and having on that 
beautiful silvery tender coating which denotes 
primest condition, was caught at the nether 
Don net fishings one day last week. 
Loch Tay contains plenty of large trout, but 
they are rather stiff to bring up. Although early 
for salmon, it is a rather late loch for fronting. 
Of late, trout have been taking pretty well in it, 
but as yet the average weight has been little 
better than about three to the pound. 
So far as the season has gone the Salmo ferox 
has looked up pretty well. On all the Scotch 
lochs this fish frequents, there have been cap¬ 
tures—on several a good many—and of good 
weight already. _ 
The salmon net-fishing in most districts of the 
Scotch waters improved a bit last week. The 
Tay net-fishers did better for salmon, but they 
still were without any grilse. 
The success of anglers on Loch Leven, despite 
the great rush there is of them, is being well 
maintained. 
OuK Fort Augustus correspondent writes: 
“ The wet weather noted last week was short¬ 
lived, and it looks now as if we are in for another 
spell of drought. Several days of east winds 
experienced, and waters again lowering. Not¬ 
withstanding good sport is got with trout on 
Loch Ness, Loch Garry, and Loch Tarff. Thou¬ 
sands of fry still seen in the Caledonian Canal on 
their way seaward.” _ 
Our Tay correspondent writes: “Not much 
doing yet in the way of fishing. Thursday last 
was Perth holiday, when numbers of anglers 
went out; the May did about best, yielding 
baskets from 71b. to I41b. Tay and Tummel did 
not jastify expectations, the sport being poor in 
them. Still a few sea-trout being got away 
down the Perth way. The nets did rather well 
last few days considering the low state of the 
water; one station had forty salmon before mid¬ 
day on Monday.” _ 
I HEAR from Mr. Fraser, Banker, Lochmaddy, 
that there has been a change in the tenancy of the 
hotel there. He says : “ The new tenant is a 
splendid man, and I expect that he will very 
soon make Lochmaddy one of the best fishing 
centres in the west of Scotland. He has got a 
fourteen years’ lease, and he means to do a 
lot of stocking and opening up of the fishings. 
North Hist is as much water as land. There are 
lochs everywhere one goes, and in the hands of a 
man that understands fishing a good deal could 
be made of it shortly.” 
GENTLES. 
By T. H. T. 
I HAVE often wondered why a maggot should be 
called a “ gentle.” The name appears to me to be 
a scandalous waste of a good word, for a more 
insignificant, mean, miserable little brute than a 
maggot would be hard to imagine. As for his 
gentility it is only too evidently a delusion and a 
snare, and as regards his gentleness it is an 
attribute he cannot well help, inasmuch as it is 
an absolute impossibility for him to do anything 
in the slightest degree approaching to roughness ; 
so that eA’en that quality is a decidedly negative 
one. His manners are slovenly, vulgar, and even 
downright blackguardly; and as for his appear¬ 
ance he has certainly nothing to boast of in the 
way of beanty, for if it were not for the fact that 
he is thinner at one end than the other and that 
the thin end generally moves in front of the 
thicker one, it would be a matter of no small 
difficulty to discover which is his head and which 
his tail! He is, however, of a lively and, con¬ 
sidering the undoubted attachment he shows to 
the terribly disreputable spot to which he owes 
his birth and sustenance, perhaps even of an 
affectionate disposition. He is never seen to give 
himself airs and march about with nose in the 
air like many of his betters, for the simple 
reason, possibly, that he hasn’t a nose to do it 
with. His telescopic wriggle is the most in¬ 
teresting feature about him, and taking into 
consideration all his disadvantages it is astonish¬ 
ing how he manages to “ worm ” himself into 
notice so much as he does. This is doubtless 
due to his peculiarly pushing and enterprising 
character, for humble as are his antecedents, 
and neglected as his education must naturally 
be, he somehow shoAvs an unmistakable capacity 
for better things. He looks fairly respectable 
when properly scoured, and even does his level 
best when put in clean sand to appear to like 
it. It may be, however, that the excitement he 
shows in the sand is caused to some slight extent 
by the unwonted refinement of his surroundings, 
which he feels to be somewhat above his proper 
station, and not being altogether comfortable is 
anxious to get out. flut let that pass. Like the 
great unwashed tto Avhich family he belongs) he 
doesn’t take a bath because he requires it, but 
because he cannot help himself, circumstances 
being too powerful for him to withstand. 
As a lad, I was a rather enthusiastic fisher, 
and took a delight in breeding my own gentles. 
A kind-hearted butcher used to save up for me 
odd pieces of meat that had “gone ” a little, and 
at length went so far as to keep them in a most 
ungainly looking remnant of what had once been 
—in days long since gone by—a dairy pan. 
Whatever it may have been before, that pan never 
could by any combination of circumstances have 
raised itself in the dairy line to anything like the 
height of popularity, notoriety, or even reputa¬ 
tion, it enjoyed as a receptacle for gentles. There 
was not a piece of crockery for miles round so 
well known, or that made its presence felt so 
easily and yet so effectively. It seemed to 
exercise a sort of repellent influence, too, upon 
those who didn’t seem to properly understand the 
habits of gentles, which would have been 
distinctly discouraging to the maggots—had 
they but been aAvare of it. People approaching 
that pan gave themselves most ungracious airs, 
first a sniff (only one !) of contempt, then a snort 
of resentment, with a slight suggestion of anger 
mingled perhaps with pain, then, their feelings 
getting complete mastery over them, flight pure 
and simple. It is astonishing how very seldom 
two of a trade can agree, and the same rule 
holds good, evidently, of a profession. Here are 
two kinds of gentles as an example. The higher 
with his nose stuck up (well muffled up in his 
handkerchief by the way), passing the lower one 
with ill-concealed disdain, while the other goes 
on grubbing about totally oblivious of the effect 
he is producing, and, if he only had a nose, would 
probably instantly put his finger to it. As it is 
he simply wags his thin end sagely, and goes on 
with his perpetual dinner. 
I must say that I never ({uite got over the 
difficulty of putting a gentle on the hook. As a 
general rule 1 managed to get most of him on my 
finger and thumb, and to leave just a morsel of 
skin feebly protesting, as it were, on the point. 
Considering that his only mission in life is to 
provide bait, it is rather strange that he should 
take his hook so unkindly. But so it is. 
Maggots, like o'.her gentles, have a great respect 
for their own feelings, if they are sometimes 
careless of those of others, and do not like them 
outraged. 
There is after all a low-born familiarity about 
the maggot. I remember when, as a boy, I used 
to carry a few hundreds screwed up in a ])iece 
of paper in ray trousers pocket how disrespect¬ 
fully they would behave. Long before I had 
reached my destination they had all gone off in 
picnic parties over every conceivable part of my 
person and clothes. Days after the expedition I 
have assisted stragglers out of a hole in the 
lining of my waistcoast, and have discovered the 
remains of many, who had met an untimely 
death, on the latter end of my shirt, having been 
sat upon during fishing operations. He is one 
of those creatures to whom if one gives an inch 
he will take an ell—that is, he would if he wore 
only long enough—and who leave no loopnole 
untried in their endeavour to push themselves 
forward. 
Trout and S.alaiox Ova.— All interested in 
the piscatorial art (says the Natal Witness) will 
be sorry to learn that the recent shipment of 
trout ova by the “ Tartar ” has proved a failure. 
The ova were packed on a new system, which has 
been a complete failure, and on arrival every 
ovum was found to be dead. The salmon ova, 
which Avere packed in the usual Avay, however, 
arrived safe and sound. 
