A Fisherman goes North
Tun first thrill is the arrival atone of those gloomy gateways to Paradise, St. Pancras, Easton or .King's Cross. Though you have been looking forward to your fishing holiday for weeks and months, the last few days have ]made you doubt whether a holiday is worth while after all there has been so much to settle in a hurry, so marry unexpected difficulties have cropped Up ; perhaps there has beefs some delightful London. invitation which you 'are -forced to decline because you are going away.. Why go away ? But the labelling of luggage with magic words—Inverness, Bridge of Orchy, Avie- more; Spean Bridge, whatever it may be-.--changeS all that : your spirits rise again ; and then the joy ofPerthStatioriatfive O'clock on a spring morning. You slip on your shoes and walk to the far end of the platform, breathing in the cool air. If you change at Perth you are sure of a cup of tea in the dim refreshment room.. If 'you are going on North the kind sleeping-car man will have one ready for you.
But of course you are going North. If you were for Argyll and the West you would have climbed from Stirling round Loch Earnhead and up past MUM along the Dochart, and so to Crianlarich and Tyndrum, whence you can either make West past Dalmally and Loch Awe or north-west across the Black Mount to all the wonder of the West Highlands. You are going North on the main line from Perth, and watching for the first sight of the lordly Tay among the trees on the east of the railway while the sun drives away the rising mist. With Dunkeld the valley closes in, and you look eagerly to mark the height of the water : it does not follow that because it has been raining in London all is right here. At Ballinluig you part from the Tay and follow the Tununel—what glorious pools, and how you long to be fishing them. Then up the Garry and the long slow pull to the summit, where it is still mid-winter, and the ridges of snow lie close to the railway. And, as the train gathers speed down the decline of the Upper Spey Valley there is moresnow gleaming on the Monadh-liath range to the South. Thought you feel that you ought to take more sleep if you are to be lit to fish iri the afternoon, you cannot tear your eyes from the window and the first sight of the real hills after the long, dull winter in the South. A good breakfast, finished and done with at Aviemore, makes yon more ready to doze, and you hardly notice the slide down over the Findhorn Viaduct, past Moy and Culloden Moor. But you start to life as the train makes its crablike entrance into the bright sunshine of Inverness Station, and feverishly collect rods and fishing-bags for the motor which will drive you to the waters where you would be. Over the cobbled streets, under the red walls of the new-looking Castle, which way shall we go ? Along the shores of Loch Ness, with the loch waters lapping the stones below us, and the thin oak scrub on the hillside above star-spangled with primroses ? On to' he 'uplands, past Loch Mord, looking well enough now but turned to arid wastes of sand and mud when the water is drawn to make power ? To Whitebridge, where from the hotel you can fish burns and lochs ? Or further on to Fort Augustus and the West ? Or over the bridge and across the broad Ness—there is a fisherman wading the shallows already—across the Canal below the lock, and along the sea-road with, beyond the dancing water of the Beauly Firth, the whole Black Isle one blaze of whin and broom ? And so into the heart of the hills, where, as the wise man Says,.- the very names are jewels- Eskadale and Fasnakyle; Monar, Bennachan and Affaric. If it has been an early year And high water we may find a salmon at the Falls, where the young birches make a brilliant green mist among the black rocks, and up the hill-sides over the black heather beyond, where the yellow-green bracken is pushing up through last year's faded russet.
If not, the trout should be ready in one Loch or another. Bring out the oars from the bothy, bale the boat, put up the rods, dig out the new cast with the flies you chose so carefully —Peter Ross, Butcher, Woodcock and Yellow, wasn't it ? Whatever you fancy the trout will take to-day. For the wind is right, the water is right, the sun is shin. ing, and we are in the Highlands in the cream of the year.
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