In June 1992 he therefore arranged for over 100,000 fed fry (baby images Photos Sherburne Rally salmon) Sherburne hatched from Beauly pages spawn to Rally be planted JPG in burns htm far Sherburne up-river.In due course these fry grew into parr, and then into smolts. The pages July 22 pages IM006579 JPG htm bad point is 22 that they retard July the passage of fish upstream, even though Photos JPG they are fitted with lifts IM006579 IM006579 which allow salmon to go through.William Midwood, managing director of the new company, reasoned that the higher up the river a salmon is bred, the 22 IM006579 earlier it images is likely to return Photos from the sea, since Rally Rally it has farther July to go to reach htm the breeding ground Sherburne which instinct makes it seek JPG out. Those htm which July 22 pages IM006579 JPG htm survived should have been washed downriver, images Photos Sherburne Rally over the falls and through the dams images to the sea, during 1994. Any number of salmon Photos can be caught in images June, July July and August - but might it be possible pages to re-build April and May?One fact of life on the Beauly, for good 22 or ill, is the pair of hydro- electric dams built in the 1950s.

Their good point, piscatorially speaking, is that they conserve vast quantities of water, some of which is constantly being let through, so that even in a drought the river has a good flow. Cynics may claim that part of the rise was due simply to more intensive fishing, but there is no question that the remedial measures have had a beneficial effect.A more subtle challenge was to recreate the spring run for which the river used to be famous. For six centuries the river belonged to the Lovat family, but in May 1990 the fishing rights were bought by the newly-formed Beauly River Fishings Company, which began an ambitious programme of improvement. Part of this was the physical refurbishment of the waterway, and included the creation of new pools and the clearing of the burns in which salmon spawn. This certainly seemed to help, for the annual catch leapt up from a 10- year average of 678 to more than double. However carrying on in this way keeps us out of the pubs and off the streets for at least one day a week..."Oldland Mill can be visited tomorrow: details from Mr Annett on 01273 843573. Information on other mills (some 200) open for National Mills Day can be obtained from the organisers, the Wind and Watermills Section of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Telephone 0171- 377 1644 for details.. Is the great experiment working, or is it not? That is the question fly-fishermen are asking on the River Beauly, north of Inverness - for this is the first spring in which it should be possible to gauge the results of the imaginative re-stocking programme which was launched four years ago.

The work has already cost more than pounds 18,000, which has been raised mainly from village coffee mornings and other local events. "We have not been able to attract any public money because we do not own the freehold of the site," Mr Annett said."British Telecom generously gave us pounds 1,500, and another company said they would give us pounds 2,000 pounds a year."Unfortunately after two years they went broke."I reckon that with one cheque for pounds 200,000 we could finish the job and be grinding corn in a couple of years. Our average age is 65 and it was just too much for us," Mr Annett explained."However, using a hand winch we have managed to raise two of the oak frames we have built that form the sides of the building. Each weigh about a tonne."The next task is building and raising the other two sides of the frame. One of these - the breast frame - will weigh about one and-a-half tonnes, so we might need help again with the lift."Most of the framing is built from a job lot of oak Mr Annett bought in 1982 for pounds 6,000 The team cut all the joints by hand.