CLEAR WATERS 



however, he would be back in five minutes, for the old 

 custom of the fish below that bridge if it were left in 

 peace came back to me as an open book. So I sat 

 down, changed my fly for a small Wickham and waited, 

 and sure enough back he came into the feeding spot, 

 though I could not see exactly where he took up his posi- 

 tion. It wasn't very promising under the circumstances, 

 nor did it prove so, for I tried the little run over again 

 to the best of my skill and care without response, and 

 then as the school and town clocks across the water 

 meadows were ringing out for me, urgent notes, I 

 proceeded to wind up without more ado. It was 

 now this strange thing happened. For as my Wick- 

 ham came jerking up out of the three-foot water into 

 the clear shallow of no depth at all which sloped up 

 towards my feet I beheld to my astonishment my 

 lusty friend heading straight for me. For a brief 

 moment I failed to realise that he could be making 

 such an inconceivable ass of himself, as events proved, 

 and merely thought it strange that an unusually large 

 fish should come out into shallow, gin-clear water 

 on a sandy bottom merely to pay his respects. All 

 this, as the novelists say, occurred in less time than 

 it takes to tell. But the incredible truth struck me 

 somehow that he was actually following my fly, of 

 which the very hook and tinsel was plain enough even 

 to my eye, so I trailed it slowly towards me in six 

 inches of shallow water, till looking me practically 

 in the face, not four yards from where I stood, I 

 saw the white of my friend's gills as his mouth 

 opened. As he closed it I struck, and though I 

 could scarcely credit my senses, so impossible seemed 

 90 



