random and boldly draw the flies through the peaty water of a secluded loch. It is an agreeable change to stand upright when you have been compelled to fish crouching; to throw your flies gaily over trout who are ravenous, instead of nervously hoping to delude a fish who has been taught caution by many pricks from hooks and narrow escapes from landing nets. There is no doubt that the stupidity of these small Northern trout who rarely see an angler is very reposeful when one comes from the South. I had not made more than three casts when a couple of small fish hurled themselves out of the water and fell back, having both unfortunately missed the flies. But they were not to be denied: I cast again into the rings they made, and one was promptly hooked. So the fishing went on along the side of the loch, wading, casting and rising something at every cast. If one made six casts without moving a trout, it set one wondering what had come over the fish. The little trout, when they were hooked, fought like fury and many freed themselves or fell back as they were hastily landed. At the end of an hour I selected

A FOREST LOCH

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a dry brown patch of heather to sit upon, and turned out the contents of my bag upon the grass. Twenty-five little trout, not one of which weighed a quarter of a pound, had been bagged, and at least as many more lost. The rises must have numbered hundreds. On these occasions the conscientious fisherman, who takes pride in his art, ought to blame himself for not having bagged many more of the trout who have risen at his flies. That the trout are small need not disturb him, for the loch holds very few of much better size. Small and voracious though these little loch-trout sometimes are, they may be extremely capricious. In the present case twenty-three out of the twenty-five were caught on the same fly, which was a red-and-teal of the same size apparently as the other two flies on the cast. When I began fishing again, they had for some undiscoverable reason almost ceased rising. The causes which make all the trout in a loch simultaneously stop rising or begin to take the artificial flies is one of the great unexplained mysteries of fishing. We know very little of what is going on in the brown peaty waters of the lochs. On the Beane we can at least generally see what the trout are engaged in doing.

ones.

X

ONE may sometimes get a deal of pleasure out of humble trout from small burns. If you know that there are big fish in the water it is, of course, disgusting to catch nothing but small But if you are getting as big trout as can be expected, you may be happy though the fish are neither large nor numerous. Once I had not fished for a long time, and consequently felt a strong desire to catch a trout again. It would be hard to imagine less hopeful conditions than I found in the North on my arrival from London. The drought had lasted three weeks; a glaring sun shone in a cloudless sky; a strong east wind was blowing down-stream; a mere trickle of water ran over the shallows; and the pools were so clear that you could see the fish at the bottom as you looked into the still, peaty, brown water. But when one has but a few days for fishing and the season is the month

of May in Scotland, it is possible to have caught nothing and yet to have spent a day fishing happily. It is rather difficult to describe the little river, which rises in some peat-bog on the moors, and flows after a course of seven or eight miles into the sea. In the lower part salmon and seatrout may be got in the autumn. Just above the sea-pools the river runs, for a couple of miles, mostly through plantations of spruce-fir and sycamore. It is pretty to look at, but not much favoured by the burn-trout. I therefore started after breakfast with my rod and my bag, and walked about three miles up the high-road to a spot where this salmon river, having become a mere burn, emerges from the woods into the open pastures. It was three years since I had fished there; but I remembered perfectly every yard of the water, every deep place where there used to be trout, every shallow place that was hopeless, every turn and winding in the course, and every stony or boggy spot along the banks. It was August when I last was there, now it was May, and I was hopeful, and full of plans for catching trout. I turned from the dusty road,

climbed over a gate in the low stone-wall, and walked across a rushy piece of pasture where shaggy cattle and black-faced sheep, with little lambs, were feeding. When I reached the stream the lowness of the water made my heart sink. Nevertheless I began to put up my rod and fix on the reel. I will not dissemble the excitement I felt. The further one walked up, the more enchanting did the surroundings become. The air was full of song from skylarks; pairs of peewits called and swooped around me; the warble of willow-wrens came from the plantations behind; and many a cuckoo, shouting his loudest, told one that it was spring. Few persons other than the Highlanders have the pleasure of hearing the cuckoo in the Highlands. I had never done so before, and I then determined that no year must pass in future without my doing so. I picked out a cast of the finest gut. It was an old one, which had seen use, but seemed sound enough; and I always hate to embark on a new piece of curly, stiff gut. Having knotted it to the reel line, I cast it into the burn to soak, laid down the rod, and turned to the tin box which