XI

SEA-TROUT IN THE SHETLANDS

ITTLE TOM, the Water-Baby, was driven

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out of the river where he passed his early years by the effect upon the water-world of a hot summer culminating in thunderstorms, and by the used-up, oppressive atmosphere that goes therewith. There is a certain time in every year in the valleys of South-country chalk-streams when that same used-up feeling tends to oppress; even the evenings and the nights cease to be cool and to give relief. Then -it may be towards the end of July, it may be early in August-come memories of purple heather and of green bracken, of bog-myrtle and cotton-grass, of springs of icy-cool water in spongy emerald turf in nooks on the mountainside, of great granite boulders, lichen-covered, and of clear rapid streams swelling to turgid torrents in their rocky beds in July and August spates; of those same streams fining down again to clear amber-brown, streaked with foam

bubbles, and of sea-trout in the deep pools and in the rapid runs. Above all, of the pure and keen air coming up the strath or over the moors and lochs, fresh, like the trout, from the sea.

There is something about the play of a seatrout that you get in no other form of fishing with the fly. No one who has seen them shooting up a high fall, which salmon after salmon has failed to negotiate, can fail to marvel at the tremendous energy and muscular power bottled up in their shapely forms. You get the full benefit of that energy when you hook one on a fly. But let us put off the memory of such struggles till we get to the recital of the landing of a big one, not "freshrun but, better than that, not even run at all, still in the sea water of a Shetland voe. They are then in the full vigour of their life in the sea, of which element we are tempted to believe the tale that it is the mother of all living things in this planet. Charles Kingsley, from whose writings it is so difficult to avoid quoting in a book on fishing, seems to have held that view. "Tom," the Water-Baby, when the fresh river water turned salt all round him in the mouth of the estuary, "felt as strong, and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run

champagne; and gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the water, a yard high, and head over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch the noble, rich salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother of all living things." The President of the American Natural History Museum, according to a Press report of March 1918, put forward the conundrum whether life "is solely physicochemical in its energies or whether it includes a plus energy or element which may have distinguished life from the beginning." I apologize for the polysyllables. Most fishermen would, I know, prefer the language of the poet to that of the scientist to describe the upward evolution of life, in ten million centuries or so, from the ingredients of sea water to man:

A fire-mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell,

A jelly-fish and a Saurian, the cave where cave-men dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, and a face turned from the clod.

Some call it "Evolution,"

And others call it "God." (W. H. Carrieth.)

I should like to know the man who wrote that. But to get back to the scientist: he explained that existing sea water is an ideal chemical medium for life, as its chemical compo

sition strongly resembles that of the blood serum of the higher animals.

Of the marvels wrought beneath the sea upon the growth and vigour of the salmon, the trout and the eel, our three river fish that spend so much of their lives in salt water, there is no doubt whatever; and if you want your veins to run champagne, and yourself to feel strong and light and fresh, the sea-trout of Scotland or the isles will give you every opportunity of acquiring that feeling.

My first experience of sea-trout fishing was on a loch in the west coast-a lovely day in glorious scenery. We were on a walking-tour (passed mostly either in a boat or on wheels), and we were spending the last night with a keen fisherman and most kindly of hosts, now gone to his rest. We were to be met by a yacht the next evening, to sail homewards past the sunset glories behind the islands of Rum, Eigg and Muck-but it is of fishing I am writing now, not of that sail homewards. Our host mentioned after dinner that he was fishing for sea-trout the next day and would one of us care to come too? I waited, silent, with my heart in my mouth, and much to my joy no one else was keen on fishing, so the lot fell to me. There was a nice fishing ripple.

At first I found casting from a boat with a long rod rather awkward, but soon got into it, and landed, or rather "boated," thirteen sea-trout, averaging two pounds. It was one of those days, like my first with brown trout, when they attached themselves without any skill on my part, and, obviously purely through luck, I caught several more than my highly skilled host. Though the surroundings were very beautiful, my first experience of loch fishing did not impress me as being very high up in the scale of sport. The sea-trout played vigorously, it is true, but my rod must have been thirteen or fourteen feet, as sea-trout rods ran in those days, and there really seemed to be no reason why a fish should ever be lost when once hooked on such tackle. There was the whole loch for him to play about in, and plenty of line on the reel. Only one gave any excitement, by an expedition under the boat and a run on the other side thereof, but the gillie spun the boat round skilfully, and luckily the line did not catch in a splinter of wood on the bottom. Certainly the fish were a goodly sight, washed and laid out on the grass where we had luncheon; but I do not feel inclined to dwell on the subject of loch fishing from a boat for sea-trout, though I have since some