Perhaps the best day's trout fishing I ever had was on a glaring hot day in June 1874, when in the upper pools of the Little Gruinard river, a short distance below Fionn Loch, I caught with ordinary trout flies one monster of ten pounds, about a dozen from two to three pounds, and a large number of lesser fish.
Permission must now be obtained to fish Fionn Loch, and no angler need expect to make the bags of the old times, either in number or size.
At the head of Fionn Loch is a smaller loch, called the Dubh Loch, swarming with large trout. In 1876 and 1877 this sheet of water was the subject of litigation. The Lord Ordinary, in the Outer House of the Court of Session, decided that the Dubh Loch was not a separate loch from the Fionn Loch, and that Mr O. H. Mackenzie had a joint right of fishing in it as well as in the Fionn Loch, part of the shores of which belong to him. This decision was reversed by the Inner House, whose judgment was (on appeal) finally upheld by the House of Lords. The issue raised was a nice one, and depended on the determination of several interesting questions.
In a small loch on the Inverewe ground, on 24th September 1874, I hooked three trout of one pound each at one cast, and succeeded in landing them all. I have several times landed three small trout on the same cast when fishing the Little Gruinard river, but I never got three really good ones except that once.
All the lochs open to visitors at the hotels yield fair sport to the fly-fisher, and those who like bait fishing will be sure of a nice bag of trout from any of the smaller lochs, if the tempting worm be tried in the "gloaming," or twilight.
Large trout may be captured by trolling on Loch Kernsary, which is, I believe, open to visitors staying at the Poolewe Hotel. It is my opinion, as already said, that char exist in most Highland lochs. I have only known these pretty little fish to have been actually taken from four of the lochs in Gairloch. Loch Kernsary is the only one of these lochs which is open to tourist-anglers. Char may be taken by the angler, and possibly may be thrown into the creel without the captor noticing the red belly which is the chief distinction between the char and the trout. Very few char are taken in Gairloch, and they are usually small, about four or five to the pound. In flavour they are not to be distinguished from trout, any more than the pink-fleshed trout are to be distinguished from those with white flesh. If you doubt me, try an experiment; let some one whose palate you can trust be blindfolded, and he or she will, to your surprise, be unable to discriminate between char and trout, and between pink and white-fleshed trout. Take care the experiment be tried fairly, and it will not fail.
The ordinary trout of the country do not rise to the fly before May, and then in no great numbers. In June they yield good sport, but July is the month in which the largest bags of well-conditioned trout may be expected. Trout fishing requires more delicate skill than salmon fishing, and is grand training of the senses of sight and touch.
There are eels in all the lochs and streams, but they are seldom hooked, and, when they are, what a mess they make of your tackle!
The only other fish in the fresh waters of Gairloch is the voracious pike. I believe this monster only occurs in the Feur (or Fiar) Loch and Loch Bad na Sgalaig, and in the river Kerry, all in connection, and I only hope he will not spread further. Dr Mackenzie gives the following account of the importation of pike to Gairloch. Writing of his boyhood, he says:—"No loch had pike till one black day my eldest brother inveigled me into catching a dozen small pike in the east coast Blackwater and driving them to the west, where I launched them safely into Fiar Loch, a small twenty acre sheet surrounded with bullrushes, and just boiling with innumerable trout. It only communicated with one other lake, and from it the pike flew to the sea over a high waterfall, down which we never dreamed that the abominable creatures would go. Very soon the lochs were not boiling with trout on a summer evening as of old, and plans were laid for famous pike-fishing with trimmers, or a flock of geese with trout-baited hooks fastened to their legs and sent across the loch. But ere this ploy came off a salmon fisher in the river below the falls caught a fine pike on his salmon hook; the abomination was one of those I had launched into Fiar Loch, and who ought to have broken his neck when shooting the Kerry falls; alas, it was quite ower true a tale! The vermin had learned that the Kerry was a salmon river with lots of delicious smolts there in May, and parr, i.e. young salmon, all the rest of the year. So they soon stocked every pool in the Kerry, and a salmon in that river has for years become a greater wonder than a white blackbird; the fry all carefully eaten up, and few salmon return to the Kerry."
Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, the present baronet of Gairloch, states that none of the pike above-mentioned as having been put into Feur Loch survived, and that pike were introduced (or re-introduced) in his day—about 1848.