174 FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 



had better discard the fly for the worm. But the 

 yellow-bellied little fellows come leaping up so keenly, 

 in flashes of brightness, through the brown of the peat- 

 coloured fluid, that you are ceaselessly occupied in 

 pulling them out. It is a relief, no doubt, to straighten 

 your back on some tiny patch of verdant sward ; but 

 when you have got your breath again, and the aching 

 has died out of your muscles, you are only too eager to 

 go back to the work. Then there is " guddling " 

 that delight of one's happy boyhood a passion which, 

 like that of birds'-nesting, sticks to us in maturer 

 manhood. A useful art is guddling on occasions. 

 More than once have we eked out the meagre com- 

 missariat of some out-of-the-way inn by stripping off 

 coat and shoes and stockings and going to work in the 

 adjacent brook. You mark the trout shoot under the 

 stone in mid-stream, and there you circumvent him 

 with a hand on either side tickling him gently, if he 

 eludes all but your finger-tips, till you persuade him to 

 subside, in a hypnotised intoxication, into your clutch ; 

 or you have thrust your arm into the winding hole 

 under the bank, at the risk of provoking the bite of a 

 water-rat, and find you have introduced yourself to a 

 happy family of fishes, which you draw forth succes- 

 sively in assorted sizes. That is charming sport for a 

 warm summer-day when the silvery stream has shrunk 

 down in its stony bed, and the coolness of the water is 

 an agreeable relief from the oppressive temperature of 

 the thundery atmosphere. Or you may be tempted 

 to go "pot-hunting" in another form. You have 



