Among Snow-time Salmon
1COTLAND now offers lusty welcome to the hardy salmon-angler. The Thurso, Brora, Helmsdale, Beauly, Spey, the royal Dee, Tay and many ilother East Coast stream has its quota of spring fish fresh-run" from the sea. The sport is keen and great. .; we stand by this shore of Loch Tay, on this morning ! mornings which opens the rod-angler's season, the piffled January sunshine is filled with clear, white alliance. The snow has transformed sombre fields and P.y, melancholy moors into landscapes of virgin beauty. '0, yet no oar ruffles the water. . The sounds of farm and )ad die out in faint whispers. Each rock promontory on he loch-side adds contrast of black and crowning white the deep green of shallow, the dark blue of deep waters.
0 longer does mighty Ben Lawers frown darkly above : it is a white coronal uplifted to the shining sky.
Yesterday, as we passed up the loch-side road, the- ;inset played in flashes of red, orange and purple among he fantastic cloud-piles which smothered the mountain, hen gave way to a dark-blue vault through which iiekered the stars—Orion in jewelled armour, Sirius parkling from green to gold, the Milky Way in hazy, ,10iinous masses. Such a night uplifted the heart of the 'Ale. His training and instinct knew that salmon 0ald stir under such conditions, that sharp night frosts .Nike for better sport. Into the heavy, broad-beamed ,mt, armfuls of straw and rushes are thrown. The chill.
r. January water strikes shrewdly even through the !sekest of rubbers. Then the oars chug against the row- 'eks and the boat glides forward over the dark surface. „Spring salmon of Loch Tay run large. The average fish !! the East Coast streams is probably less than 9 lb., but v.re a week's fishing has worked to 19 lb. each. Giants r 30 lb. and upwards are taken every season, with ..eords for January rising nearly to the magic 90-pounder which we . aspire,. The fish come at deep baits, r'ferably the artificial minnow. The rods find trolling lines are deftly fixed as we draw out from shore, and then begins the waiting. There is little art in hooking a fish with this gear, and it is commonly said that few need, be lost, if the tackle is good and the reel has plenty of line. A giant fish, however, needs the hand of an expert, even though the water be deep and free from obstacles.
This glorious morning of mornings every boat on the loch will be requisitioned, and always the distant chug of oars shows where one's rivals arc working. On Loch Tay so much depends on the choice of position, for which the ghillie is responsible. One rarely secs the salmon before he is hooked : but now and again, some great fish stirred by curiosity will float up toward the surface, showing a great side of silver and a back of blue as it turns and swings. A hooked fish is a rare puller. The line sways this way and that to its movements, and skilled naviga- tion is necessary. The boatman has most trouble at this stage ; but, later, when the salmon is tiring, real rod- work is needed. The gaff is used skilfully by these Loch Tay men, and rarely indeed can disaster be laid to their fault. But with the air chilled with snow, with the rings clogging with ice, with the chance of a squall of hail or snow sweeping down from the mountains, thcre is plenty of chance about Loch Tay fishing.
There are rewards too. After an hour of quiet waiting, the reel begins to whir, the line jerks and plunges, and the rod is carefully taken in hand. Then conies the struggle—now brisk, now lethargic, but ever winning back inches of precious line. The deep-water salmon does not jump about on the surface as a rule, but his tactics arc just as hard to overcome. The weather may change, the sun go down, a cold blast scream down the corrics, but the angler knows nothing of these things, until, at the end of the struggle, the fish gets the steel and is brought into the well of the boat, flapping out with mond tail and fins the last moments of its life. Then, in the gloaming and the mirk, your eye feasts on the shining prize, and the angler's heart is at peace.
W. T. P.
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