Loach

“ But in less than half a minute I was ashamed of that idea, and remembered how she was vexed to think that even a loach should lose his life. And then I said to myself, 'Now surely she would value me more than a thousand loaches; and what she said must be quite true about the way out of this horrible place.'
Therefore I began to search with the utmost care and diligence, although my teeth were chattering, and all my bones beginning to ache with the chilliness and the wetness. Before very long the moon appeared, over the edge of the mountain, and among the trees at the top of it ”

“ There are many people, even now, who have not come to the right knowledge what a loach is, and where he lives, and how to catch and pickle him. And I will not tell them all about it, because if I did, very likely there would be no loaches left ten or twenty years after the appearance of this book. ”

“ The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance; its back is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the back and tail fins; a black line runs from each eye down to the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines ”

“ It is a pity the loach is so delicate; it shows signs of exhaustion sooner than any fish in the collection. If oxygen fails, it comes to the surface to gulp air, and at last rolls over on its back, and pants in a way that is very painful to witness. Removed to a pan, under a jet of water, it soon recovers; but if long confined in a vessel the least overstocked, especially in warm weather, finishes his career by convulsive gaspings at the surface. ”

“ The Loach is not unlike the shape of the Eel: he has a beard or wattles like a barbel. He has two fins at his sides, four at his belly, and one at his tail; he is dappled with many black or brown spots; his mouth is barbel-like under his nose. This fish is usually full of eggs or spawn; and is by Gesner, and other learned physicians, commended for great nourishment, and to be very grateful both to the palate and stomach of sick persons. He is to be fished for with a very small worm, at the bottom ”

“ The loach, the common carp, Prussian carp, roach, tench, and gudgeon, may be admitted, but the first three are preferable to the last. The common tadpole possesses considerable interest in its development into the frog. The small newt and the triton are objects of interest and quite harmless. ”

“ Intestines in short loops across abdomen of intermediate size, as to length and diameter. Air bladder small; very common. Swarm in deepish pools under limestone rocks, takes bait, i.e. offal and worms with great avidity. Like many other species, it is asserted to be the English trout: it rises to the surface. 24 Loach, Same place com- Shape subcylindrical, pale mon, greenish-brown, with very broad bars of brown, fins spotted with black, otherwise fuscescent ”

“ Now, if you have ever been fishing, you will not wonder that I was led on, forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed of the time, but shouting in a childish way whenever I caught a 'whacker' (as we called a big fish at Tiverton) ; and in sooth there were very fine loaches here, having more lie and harbourage than in the rough Lynn stream, though not quite so large as in the Lowman, where I have even taken them to the weight of half a pound. ”

“ In China and Japan it is replaced by an equally large species, M. anguillicaudatus.
Nemachilus.—No erectile sub-orbital spine. Six barbels, none at the mandible. Dorsal fin opposite to the ventrals.
The greater number of Loaches belong to this genus; about fifty species are known from Europe and temperate Asia; such species as extend into tropical parts inhabit streams of high altitudes. Loaches are partial to fast-running streams with stony bottom, and exclusively animal feeders. In spite of their small size they are esteemed as food where they occur in sufficient abundance. ”

“ The Loaches, Cobitidinae, which form a very natural sub-family, are small fishes, few species growing to a foot in length, mostly living in small streams and ponds. Many delight in the mud at the bottom, in which they move like Eels. In some cases, the branchial respiration appears to be insufficient, and the intestinal tract acts as an accessory breathing organ. ”

“ A roach firmly hooked ought never to be lost; it requires a dexterous hand to pilot a dace safely out of a rapid current—that is to say, a dace of two or three to the pound.
And the dace is deserving of respect because it will honestly take the fly. True, the roach does so too, occasionally; but the dace, any time between June and September, rises regularly. We used to get them in the Colne considerably over 1/2 lb. in weight, and an afternoon's perseverance and a little wading would, in favourable weather, put from twenty to thirty fish into your basket. ”

“ Jack may then be seen basking by the weeds.
When an exceptionally long continuance of dry weather forces all the fish to retire to the few acres of water that remain, then these voracious brutes do as they please with the other fish, and the roach especially suffer. Every two or three minutes the fry may be seen leaping into the air in the effort to escape, twenty or thirty at a time, and falling with a splash. The rush of hundreds and hundreds of roach causes a wave upon the surface which shows the course they take. ”

“ These roach literally swarm. At their spawning time that part of the lake the shore of which is stony is positively black with them. For a distance of some hundred and fifty yards the water for seven or eight feet from shore is simply a moving mass of roach. They crowd up against the stones, get underneath them and behind them, enter every little creek and interstice, and are so jammed by their own numbers that they may easily be caught by hand. In their anxiety to secure a place they crush against each other and splash up the water. ”

“ The loch seems to prove that any hill-tarn might be made a good place for sport, if trout were introduced where they do not exist already. But the size of these in Loch Beg puzzles me, nor can one see how they breed, as breed they do: for twice or thrice I caught a fingerling, and threw him in again. No burn runs out of the loch, and, even in a flood, the feeder is so small, and its course so extremely steep, that one cannot imagine where the fish manage to spawn. The only loch known to me where the common trout are of equal size, is on the Border. ”

“ A new farmer had given up letting the water off, and probably there must have been very rich feeding, water-shrimps or snails, which might partly account for the refusal to rise at the artificial fly. Or they may have been ottered by the villagers, though that would rather have made them rise short than not rise at all.
There is another loch on an extremely remote hillside, eight miles from the smallest town, in a pastoral country. There are trout enough in the loch, and of excellent size and flavour, but you scarcely ever get them. They rise freely, but they always rise short. ”

“ Certain it is, he is a big strong fish with some features distinct from the ordinary loch trout, and that when caught he shows an amount of fight not to be equalled by any of his neighbours, either white or brown. He is usually caught by trolling either natural or artificial minnow; and the tackle should be mounted on gimp and fixed to a strong line, and plenty of it. We have read of a ferox [56] rising to the fly, but never saw one so captured. There seems no reason why a gaudy fly should not attract him. After he is hooked the fun begins. ”

“ Some say the Roach is so called from rutilus, which they say signifies
red fins. He is a fish of no great reputation for his dainty taste; and his
spawn is accounted much better than any other part of him. And you
may take notice, that as the Carp is accounted the water-fox, for his
cunning; so the Roach is accounted the water-sheep, for his simplicity
or foolishness. It is noted, that the Roach and Dace recover strength,
and grow in season in a fortnight after spawning ”

“ The spikes of the grass are here cropped, and before us there rises an enormous swarm of locusts, who move up the river. These may be, for the moment, welcome food to the fish mostly seen here, which are wide-mouthed, but otherwise similar to an eel (Clarias anguillaris) . All those that we caught, had locusts in their belly. The wind, as is usual about noon, has almost entirely slackened; the crew row, [174] keeping time with songs to their oars, S.W. by S. About three o’clock, we halt at the right shore of the reeds, which are dry here, although on the right they are of a soft green. ”

“ If you have been fortunate enough to get the steel into him, you will have time to admire him when you get him into the boat. Fishing for sea-trout with the fly is, we consider, the most exciting of all kinds of fishing—that is, if the [52] fish run to a fair average weight. But we are sorry to say that lochs where it is to be enjoyed are, with the solitary exception of Loch Lomond, usually far out of ordinary reach,—and in the case of Loch Lomond, it is only habitués who usually come much speed on it; but once the angler gets a fair day there, he finds his way back often. ”

“ One great matter is, that the loch-fisher is dependent on nothing but enough wind to "curl" the water,—and on a large loch it is very seldom that a dead calm prevails all day,—and can make his arrangements for a day, weeks beforehand; whereas the stream-fisher is dependent for a good take on the state of the water: and however pleasant and easy it may be for one living near the banks of a good trout stream or river, it is quite another matter to arrange for a day's river-fishing, if one is looking forward to a holiday at a date some weeks ahead. ”

“ When thus spawning the roach are preyed on by rats—not the water-rat, but the house or drain rat. There are always a few of these about the lake, and they grow to an enormous size. They destroy the roach in great numbers. I have seen the sand strewn with dead fish opposite and leading up to their holes; for they catch and kill many more than they can eat, or even have time to carry away. I have shot at these great rascals when they have been swimming fifty yards from shore, and I strongly suspect them of visiting the nests of moorhens and other waterfowl with felonious purposes. ”

“ Even the fish revel in him, when good fortune brings him to them. The Locust leaps blindly, and without definite aim: he comes down wherever he is shot by the springs in his legs. If the place where he falls happens to be water, a fish gobbles him up at once. Anglers sometimes bait their hooks with a specially attractive Locust.
As for his being fit nourishment for man, except in the form of Partridge and young Turkey, I am a little doubtful. ”

“ The house was within a hundred paces of the loch, in a place of wild beauty on a bit of moor, yellow with gorse, extending from the great barren mountains behind it right down into the water. Immense banners of mist lay along the tops of these mountain peaks, and streams of water like skeins of silk marked the deep gorges in dazzling whiteness.
The loch was a crooked finger of the sea hooked into the land. It was clear as glass in the bright morning. The open sea was directly beyond the crook of the finger, barred out by a nest of needlepointed rocks. ”

“ While the fry of most other fish swim in shoals, sometimes in countless numbers, the tiny jack, hardly so long as one’s little finger, lurks all alone behind a stone which forms a miniature harbour. On a warm day almost every such place has its youthful pirate. Notwithstanding the terror of the roach when pursued, they will play about apparently without the slightest fear when the pike is basking in the sun with his back all but on a level with the surface—that is, when the lake is at its ordinary height. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some days really good sport is to be had—indeed, one is surprised at the show of fish; but fish or no fish, the charm of Loch Lomond is everlasting. The angler finds his way back over and over again, till, as in our own experience, the islands of Lonaig, Moan, Cruin, Fad, and last and least, Darroch, the great landing-spot, are as familiar to him as his daily business haunts. Then the [79] chances of a salmon are good—indeed, this year (1881) a great many have been killed ”

“ These locusts are, as may be supposed, the great enemies to the farmers of these regions—their greatest, even before early and late frosts. Fortunately they do not come every year. We fell in with a few black bears and wolves, and with red deer and elks, buffaloes, and other wild animals, so that we had plenty of fresh meat for the table, besides wild fowl and fish, amongst which is a delicious variety of pike, named by the original French Canadians, from the peculiar formation of its mouth and head, Masque-alonge, Long-face. ”

“ Roach is a handsome fish either in, or fresh out of the water; it inhabits many of our deep, still rivers; affecting, like the others of this genus, quiet waters; it is gregarious, keeping in large shoals; it has a small head, a leather mouth, which is round, and also small, with the teeth in the throat; large eyes, the circle of which resembles gold colour, and the iris red; the roach is deep, but thin, and the back elevated; the scales are large, and easily fall off; the fins are in general red, particularly whilst in perfection ”