20 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



it ; or, worse still, he will rise at it, once and again, 

 making an exciting splash or boil in the water, but 

 carefully abstaining from taking hold. The ordinary 

 practice of anglers, in such cases, is to change the fly ; 

 and by patience in giving the fish pretty long rests 

 between the casts, and perseverance in trying him 

 again and again, he is generally induced at last to 

 make a serious attempt, and to become the angler's 

 partner in that whirring waltz that lands him finally 

 — more exhausted even than the miss who has been 

 whirled a dozen times round the ball-room by an 

 over-vigorous officer — upon the green sward or the 

 grey gravel. 



The clean spring salmon disdains the company of 

 kelts and " bubblies"* in pools and caulds, and " keeps 

 himself to himself" in the surging streams and boiling 

 eddies. So few there be, however — or we should per- 

 haps say, so few there have been — of such fish, that the 

 casts favourable for them in Tweed are almost syste- 

 matically passed over ; and it is not until the rejoicing 

 tidings have passed upwards from Berwick that the 

 grilse have begun to enter — which is usually about 

 the middle of June — that the angling fly begins its 

 preposterous antics in the true salmon-streams. (We 

 say the antics are preposterous, because no fly that is 

 born of a chrysalide could ever by any possibility 

 struggle against the current as the angler's fly does.) 

 From the middle of July till the close of the season 

 a favourable flood is sure to bring a gTilse or two 

 into every " water ;" and it is during this period that 



* The Tweedside fishermen on the lower waters contempt- 

 uously designate a bull-trout kelt a " bubbly." 



