THE WATERS OF CADER IDRIS 



standard, to my thinking, for any lake — certainly 

 for one of the accessible and less costly kind, for it 

 means more fish of a handsome and respectable type 

 and more sport. Till you get to the very large fish, 

 which is another matter, plenty of half-pounders are, 

 I think, more comforting than occasional pounders, 

 for the latter have Httle more chance of defeating you, 

 if properly hooked in the middle of a lake, than the 

 former. The west wind blowing up the open ten 

 miles of valley from the sea, even if it were not the 

 fishermen's wind, is the one to be invoked on Tal-y- 

 llyn, shut in as it is upon the other three sides by 

 mountains. Sometimes it lashes the short mile of 

 water into raging billows and blows you down the 

 drifts, despite the big stone hung overboard as a drag, 

 with deplorable velocity, and the inevitable pull back 

 against the storm a dozen times perhaps in a day puts 

 you out of conceit with the fancy for being your own 

 boatman. But this is only on occasions as rare, perhaps, 

 as those still worse ones which from morn till eve 

 confront the lake fisher with an unbroken surface of 

 glass, when the only thing to be done is to go up a 

 mountain — no bad alternative either at Tal-y-llyn. 



The fish here are emphatically short risers, as only 

 becomes a breed whose ancestors have been fished 

 over for a hundred years. Above all, when soft 

 breezes just ruffle the face of the waters and the season 

 advances, the Tal-y-Uyn trout are preternaturally 

 sharp, and you have to be painfuUy wideawake. It 

 is then, no doubt, that the highest skill, or rather the 

 keenest alertness, is required in lake fishing. Three 

 flies of small size were used, and it is needless to say, 



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