158 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 



personal experience when the fish he has played, having 

 broken his line, has come to a change of flies on the 

 second time of asking, as if ten minutes' tumbling on 

 the hook against the stream had merely put a keener 

 edge on his voracity. 



So we cast considerations of morbid sentimentality 

 to the winds, and write of angling from the sports- 

 man's point of view. A contemplative recreation, some 

 people love to call it. Well, a contemplative recreation 

 it is ; nor is it a slight charm about it when the fish 

 are shy to be wooed, and you are wandering through 

 the woodlands by the rippling water, that you may 

 abandon yourself to reflection in the interludes of 

 working, and draw profitable inspirations from the 

 beauties of nature. Always supposing, that is to say, 

 that you do not let your wits go a-wool-gathering from 

 your immediate business ; for you should make each 

 cast as if the odds were in favour of a rise and moon- 

 struck abstraction is fatal to heavy baskets. But there 

 are anglers and anglers, as there are streams and streams, 

 from the swift-rushing Spey or the treacherous Find- 

 horn, to the waters of the Midland shires, that go softly 

 over bottoms of mud between borders of willows. A 

 contemplative recreation, you say ! We put it to any 

 man who boasts himself a good all-round sportsman. 

 What are the moments of most thrilling excitement he 

 ever experienced in his life ? He has felt the beating of 

 his heart come suddenly to a stand-still as he crawled 

 upon the antlers of a " stag of ten " showing over the 

 heather hillock in the corry, when the gusty breezes 



