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Near
the beginning of the season I was in the antiquarian bookshop
in Inverness. As I flicked through a copy of A.H. Chaytors
book “Letters to a salmon fishers sons.” I noticed
one of the illustrations was undoubtedly of the head of the
Long pool at Amat, the title of the photo simply said "a
salmon pool".
I
went up to the lodge to see if they had a copy of the book,
borrowed a copy and sure enough - of the eight photos in the
book four of them are of the Amat beat. The photo with the
title, “A highland river” is the Steps pool Amat.
The next is titled “A rocky stream in Scotland”
is the Church pool Amat, the fourth photo titled, ” The
throat of a pool “ is the very head of the Craigs pool,
looking up to Dolly’s pool.
In this article the original photo is shown along with a photo
I have taken in black and white from roughly the same spot.
The book was first published in 1910 it would be interesting
to find out if, when, and how often, Chaytor fished at Amat.
In the book Chaytor also mentions uncle Clervaux and refers
to him as a Frenchman, we of course have the Frenchman’s
pool just upstream of the Long pool, and the Bo bahn pool
below my house is known as the Frenchmans pool by the opposite
bank Braelangwell. The estate around this time was owned by
Francis Gervers if anyone knows any of the descendants of
A. H. Chaytor or has came across any other info about the
above I would be very interested to hear.
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