This season was to me a red letter year in Scotch sport; very considerable success rewarded my personal endeavours in every way.
During the month of April I fished on the Thurso and on Loch More, as one of the party of eight rods, all fishing from Strathmore Lodge, and I killed fifty-three salmon.
Sixteen of them, weighing 164-1/2lb., I made in the one day, the 15th, to my own rod on No. 8 beat of the river. On that day good fortune seemed to attend me at all points; they were taking surely in heavy dead water pools, and I bagged every fish into which I bent the rod—a most unusual circumstance. Many never showed a rise, they sucked the fly under water.
The first fish damaged the fly, the next fourteen were taken with one fly, a small silver-grey, no change of fly, but retied several times to the single gut cast.
The last fish, a fifteen-pounder, I had moved in the morning, in fact the first rise, and the last thing before leaving off I crossed the river and changed for a larger size silver-grey as the light was failing, and at that he came like a lion.
Not a single hitch or contretemps occurred during the day. Certainly both myself and my gillie, Johnny Sinclair, were desperately careful, examining and proving knots of the gut casting line after every fish. We were in for a good thing, and nothing that care and attention would do was neglected.
That was the best day ever made on a Thurso river beat and still holds the record, and in all probability will continue to do so.
It was a very hard day's work; as the fish meant it, I meant it, and I kept the fly going without intermission, with an interval of ten minutes for lunch, from 9.30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The next day, a Saturday, and also the Sunday, I laid up in the lodge with lumbago.