In some lochs the sea-
trout prefer such a hurricane that a boat can hardly be kept on the
water. I have known a strong north wind in autumn put down the
sea-trout, whereas the salmon rose, with unusual eagerness, just in the
shallows where the waves broke in foam on the shore. The best day I ever
had with sea-trout was muggy and grey, and the fish were most eager when
the water was still, except for a tremendously heavy shower of rain, "a
singing shower," as George Chapman has it. On that day two rods caught
thirty-nine sea-trout, weighing forty pounds. But it is difficult to say
beforehand what day will do well, except that sunshine is bad, a north
wind worse, and no wind at all usually means an empty basket. Even to
this rule there are exceptions, and one of these is in the case of a tarn
which I shall call, pleonastically, Little Loch Beg.
This is not the real name of the loch--quite enough people know its real
name already. Nor does it seem necessary to mention the district where
the loch lies hidden; suffice it to say that a land of more streams and
scarcer trout you will hardly find. We had tried all the rivers and
burns to no purpose, and the lochs are capricious and overfished. One
loch we had not tried, Loch Beg. You walk, or drive, a few miles from
any village, then you climb a few hundred yards of hill, and from the
ridge you see, on one hand a great amphitheatre of green and purple
mountain-sides, in the west; on the east, within a hundred yards under a
slope, is Loch Beg.
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