CHAPTER V 



STRAY NOTES ON THE GAME-FISH 



During the months of March and April, the North Tyne, 

 Reedwater, and other Border rivers swarm with the kelts 

 of salmon and bull-trout, awaiting suitable floods to take 

 them down to the sea. These kelts, in certain years, 

 are subject to a disease, Saprolegnia ferax, which disfigures 

 them with ugly white leprose spots, especially about the 

 head, and the poor wretches lie, inert and listless, in back- 

 waters and burn-mouths. For many of these, a flood- water 

 would avail nothing ; they are too far gone, and the sand- 

 banks are strewn with the bodies of those already dead- — ■ 

 choice morsels for the corbies. 



A serious nuisance to the trout-fisher in early spring 

 are these great hungry kelts- — an epithet to be noted for 

 remembrance later. At that season the "rise" of trout to 

 fly is very uncertain and always brief. In March it may 

 be counted in minutes ; in April it may last an hour — 

 perhaps two — some time between eleven and three o'clock. 



At length that crucial moment arrives. The angler 

 who has been awaiting it, watching for every premonitory 

 symptom, is all alert and ready for action at precisely that 

 spot where (conditions of water and wind being considered) 

 success is best assured. Already, within a quarter of an 

 hour from the start, he has encreeled six, eight — possibly 



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