Part 20

Remember what Major Treherne says, "Don't strike, that tug has fastened the hook if it is to fasten;" but there is nothing so quietly satisfying as the feel on your hip of a heavy pannier of brown trout.

About the salmon you do as your gillie tells you, plant your foot on that rock, or on that sod, and cast there, and the fish comes (when he does come), as the fly swings round two yards below, or rather comes when he does come, the coming being a long way the exception; but the basket of brown trout has been your own doing--you have cast your little flies yard by yard where your own experience tells you the brown trout will come, and the gay little chap does come.

It is all your own act and deed: the gillie has had no hand in it, except bewailing the loss of time after those messing trout, when elsewhere there might be "just a chance" of the salmon that don't come.

I take it that it is every bit as sportsmanslike in its way to kill the little brown snipe, or the little brown trout, as to stalk the monarch of the glen, or rise the monarch of the stream. As regards the snipe, he is good to eat, and the monarch of the glen certainly not. I suppose for punishment of my sins, I once had to live for a week on the latter.

In passing, I may remark as to size of Scotch trout taken with the fly.

In my twenty-six years experience of Scotch fly fishing I have been accessory to the taking of only four fish exceeding 2lb. each in weight.

It is my experience that, excepting two or three lochs in Caithness and Sutherland, that the few fish that exceed 1lb., so soon as they attain that weight become predatory, feeding on their own species, that flies and insects will not maintain fish of that size in condition.

SEASON 1887.

Circumstances prevented my family going down (my boys were scattered in professional pursuits), so I determined to let Dalnawillan for August and September, and shoot at Rumsdale as a bachelor, and with two other men.

The weather turned out very disappointing and unsettled--daily storm showers; so consequently the results on both moors did not come up to my expectations.

In Rumsdale (why, I don't know) the weather was worse than in any other part of Caithness.

Only one day was I out without being interfered with by rainstorms.

In Dalnawillan the weather was rather better, and in Strathmore heavy and dull, but not much amiss.

In October, I went down to Dalnawillan with two other guns. There bad weather again followed us, but we managed to make 177 brace.

Bag. Dalnawillan. Rumsdale.

Grouse 1223 brace. 561 brace. Sundries ---- 24 "

This season was the culminating season of that cycle, and we ought to have had better bags, but wet weather makes the birds wild and skittish. I had expected 1200 brace on Dalnawillan, and 800 on Rumsdale, as a minimum; the birds were there to do it.

SEASON 1888.

All things come to an end, and the seventeen years lease was drawing to a close.

This would be my last season, and I shot at Dalnawillan with two of my sons and a friend.

My family did not go down.

Unfortunately I was very lame with rheumatism in one leg, and could only get about a few hours every other day, puddling over the near beats and working the dogs myself, with a boy to lead a spare dog, and a gillie to carry the birds.

The other party were out every day, weather permitting, two guns to the party, and taking turn and turn about.

Disease was now again getting due. We had some indication the previous season, and this season we had them all over the moor--barren birds, small broods, a bad bird now and again; in fact, a repetition identical with the commencement of the attack of 1881, and about the same result as to bag, which, however, gave a fair amount of shooting.

On moors south and east there was little or no shooting; but Strathmore on the north was much better.

Bag. Dalnawillan. Rumsdale.

Grouse 816-1/2 brace. 500-1/2 brace. Sundries 61 " ----

On the 13th I went over to Thurso to say good bye to old friends, and the next morning I was away south, thus terminating my grouse shooting days and my long and pleasant connection with Caithness and its people, and the wild moorlands of Dal-a-vhuilinn or the Miller's Dale.