Loch Duich

In 1719, British forces burned many homesteads along the loch's shores in the month preceding the Battle of Glen Shiel. The Annual Reports of the Fishery Board for Scotland provide an insight into the state of fishing from Lochs Duich and Long in the years before the First World War. In the report for 1907 we learn that there was "practically nothing doing here. Fishing [had been] a failure for a number of years back. Fishermen prosecute the fishing at the different lochs in the district." The principal kinds of fish landed were herrings and saithe. Eilean Donan Castle stands at the meeting point of Loch Duich, Loch Long, and Loch Alsh. A legend connected with Loch Duich states that three brothers who went fishing at the loch one night became enraptured by three seal-maidens who had thrown off their furs, assumed the likeness of humans, and danced in the moonlight on the sands. The brothers stole their furs, intending to claim the seal-maidens as their wives.