That fish have very little sense of feeling is proved time after time.  There is nothing unusual in catching a jack with several old hooks in his mouth.  With trout, however, the occurrence is more rare.  Last season my brother lost a fly and two yards of gut through a big trout breaking his tackle, but two minutes afterwards he caught the fish and recovered his fly and his tackle.  We constantly catch fish during the may-fly time with broken tackle in their mouths.

Who does not recollect the rapturous excitement caused by the first fish caught in early youth?  My first capture will ever remain firmly impressed on the tablet of the brain, for it was a red herring—­“a common or garden,” prime, thoroughly salted “red herring”!  It came about in this way.  At the age of nine I was taken by my father on a yachting expedition round the lovely islands of the west coast of Scotland.  We were at anchor the first evening of the voyage in one of the beautiful harbours of the Hebrides, and, noticing the sailors fishing over the side of the boat, I begged to be allowed to hold the line.  Somehow or other they managed to get a “red herring” on to the hook when my attention was diverted; so that when I hauled up a fish that in the darkness looked fairly silvery my excitement knew no bounds.  After the sailors had taken it off the hook, and given it a knock on the head, I rushed down with it into the cabin, where my father and three others were dining.  Throwing my fish down on to the table, I delightedly exclaimed, “Look what I have caught, father; isn’t it a lovely fish?” I could not understand the roars of laughter which followed, as one of the party, with a horrified glance at my capture, shouted, “Take it away, take it away!” Non redolet sed olet.  Oddly enough, although after this I caught any amount of real live fish, I never realised until months afterwards how miserably I had been taken in by the boat’s crew on that eventful night.

Not long afterwards, whilst fishing with a worm just below the falls at Macomber, in the Highlands, I made what was for a small boy a remarkable catch of sea trout.  I forget the exact number, but I know I had to take them back in sacks.  They were “running” at the time, and it was very pretty to see them continually jumping up the seven-foot ladder out of the Spean into the Lochy.  Underneath this ladder, where the water boiled and seethed in a thousand eddies, hundreds of trout lay ready to jump up the fall.  Into this foaming torrent I threw my heavily leaded bait.  No sooner was the worm in the water than it was seized by a fine sea trout.  Some of them were nearly two pounds; and although I had a strong casting-line, they were often most difficult to land, for a series of small cataracts dashed down amongst huge rocks and slippery boulders, until, a hundred feet below, the calm, deep Macomber pool was reached.  As the fish, when hooked, would often dash down this foaming torrent into the pool below, they gave a tremendous