There are trout enough in the
loch, and of excellent size and flavour, but you scarcely ever get them.
They rise freely, but they _always_ rise short. It is, I think, the most
provoking loch I ever fished. You raise them; they come up freely,
showing broad sides of a ruddy gold, like the handsomest Test trout, but
they almost invariably miss the hook. You do not land one out of twenty.
The reason is, apparently, that people from the nearest town use the
otter in the summer evenings, when these trout rise best. In a
Sutherland loch, Mr. Edward Moss tells us (in "A Season in Sutherland"),
that he once found an elegant otter, a well-made engine of some
unscrupulous tourist, lying in the bottom of the water on a sunny day. At
Loch Skene, on the top of a hill, twenty miles from any town, otters are
occasionally found by the keeper or the shepherds, concealed near the
shore. The practice of ottering can give little pleasure to any but a
depraved mind, and nothing educates trout so rapidly into "rising short";
why they are not to be had when they are rising most vehemently, "to
themselves," is another mystery. A few rises are encouraging, but when
the water is all splashing with rises, as a rule the angler is only
tantalised. A windy day, a day with a large ripple, but without white
waves breaking, is, as a rule, best for a loch.
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