VI.]

AN EXCELLENT TONIC.

133

at least we shall be in a thoroughly good temper. Whatever the morrow may bring forth, everything will appear to-day in the best possible light. Such an excellent tonic is a fast gallop over the walls for banishing dull care away.

"We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.""-The Compleat Angler.

VERY

ERY few trout we have caught this season ('98) are pink-fleshed when cooked. Last year there were a good number. The reason probably is that they have not been feeding on the fresh-water shrimps or crustaceans, owing to the abundance of olive duns and other flies that have been on the water. Last winter, being so mild, was very favourable for the hatching out of fly in the spring. A hard winter doubtless commits sad havoc among the caddis

CH. VII.]

LOCH LEVEN TROUT.

135

and larvæ at the bottom of the river; the trout, not being able to get much fly, are then compelled to fall back on the crustaceans. The food in these limestone rivers is so plentiful that the fish are able to pick and choose from a very varied bill of fare. This is the reason they are so difficult to catch. One is not able to increase the stock of trout to any great extent, thereby making them easier to catch, because the fish one introduces into the water are apt to crowd together in one or two places, with the result that they are far too plentiful in the shallows, where there is little food, and too scarce in the deeper water. Of the Loch Leven trout, turned in two years ago as yearlings, more than two-thirds inhabit the quickrunning, gravelly reaches; in consequence, they have grown very little. The few that have stayed in the deeper water have done splendidly; they are now about three-quarters of a pound in weight. No fish, not even sea trout, fight so well as these bright, silvery "Loch Levens." They have cost us no end of casts and flies already this season,-not yet a month old. Experience proves, however, that ordinary salmo fario, or common brook trout, are the best for turning down; for the Loch Leven trout require deep water to grow to any size.

When a boy, I made a strange recovery of an eel that I had hooked and lost three weeks before. I was fishing with worms in a large deep hole in Surrey. My hook was a salmon fly with the feathers clipped off. I hooked what I believed to be an eel, but he broke the line through getting it entangled in a stick on the bottom. Three weeks afterwards, when fishing

in the same fashion and in the same place, the line got fixed up on the bottom. I pulled hard and a stick came away. On that stick, strange to say, was entangled my old gut casting-line, and at the end of the line was an eel of two pounds' weight! On cutting him open, there, sure enough, was the identical clipped salmon fly; it had been inside that eel for three weeks without hurting him. This sounds like a regular angler's yarn, and nobody need believe it unless he likes; nevertheless, it is perfectly true. I had got "fixed up" in the same stick that had broken my line on the previous occasion.

That fish have very little sense of feeling is proved time after time. There is nothing unusual in catching a jack with several old hooks in his mouth. With trout, however, the occurrence is more rare. Last season my brother lost a fly and two yards of gut through a big trout breaking his tackle, but two minutes afterwards he caught the fish and recovered his fly and his tackle. We constantly catch fish during the may-fly time with broken tackle in their mouths.

Who does not recollect the rapturous excitement caused by the first fish caught in early youth? My first capture will ever remain firmly impressed on the tablet of the brain, for it was a red herring-" a common or garden," prime, thoroughly salted "red herring"! It came about in this way. At the age of nine I was taken by my father on a yachting expedition round the lovely islands of the west coast of Scotland. We were at anchor the first evening of the voyage in one of the beautiful harbours of the Hebrides, and, noticing the sailors fishing over the

VII.]

A CURIOUS CAPTURE.

137

side of the boat, I begged to be allowed to hold the line. Somehow or other they managed to get a "red herring" on to the hook when my attention was diverted; so that when I hauled up a fish that in the darkness looked fairly silvery my excitement knew no bounds. After the sailors had taken it off the hook, and given it a knock on the head, I rushed down with it into the cabin, where my father and three others were dining. Throwing my fish down on to the table, I delightedly exclaimed, "Look what I have caught, father; isn't it a lovely fish?" I could not understand the roars of laughter which followed, as one of the party, with a horrified glance at my capture, shouted, "Take it away, take it away!" Non redolet sed olet. Oddly enough, although after this I caught any amount of real live fish, I never realised until months afterwards how miserably I had been taken in by the boat's crew on that eventful night.

Not long afterwards, whilst fishing with a worm just below the falls at Macomber, in the Highlands, I made what was for a small boy a remarkable catch of sea trout. I forget the exact number, but I know I had to take them back in sacks. They were "running" at the time, and it was very pretty to see them continually jumping up the seven-foot ladder out of the Spean into the Lochy. Underneath this ladder, where the water boiled and seethed in a thousand eddies, hundreds of trout lay ready to jump up the fall. Into this foaming torrent I threw my heavily leaded bait. No sooner was the worm in the water than it was seized by a fine sea trout. Some