CLEAR WATERS 



having no deterrent effect on the others. This in- 

 difference is of course much modified in clear, ghding 

 water, but even then it is occasionally surprising how 

 callous to disturbance a matured fish shows himself. 

 I well remember how the grayling in a pool on the 

 Teme, in the very last ten minutes of a long, weary, 

 fruitless day after trout, saved in a measure the situa- 

 tion and transformed a practically empty basket into 

 one that at any rate turned out handsomely upon a dish. 

 It was in that, for anglers, and indeed for some 

 other people, awful summer of 191 1, when I happened 

 to be spending most of July in Ludlow, a sojourn I 

 had much looked forward to as incidentally affording 

 opportunities of trouting in many excellent and not un- 

 familiar streams. Among others was Lord Plymouth's 

 admirable water on the Teme above Bromfield, 

 and never having sampled it, I was looking for- 

 ward all the more keenly to making its acquaintance. 

 What a summer that was ! Yet even in that gorgeous 

 June before the parching time had come and turned 

 the thirsty land to dust and ashes, the mayfly had 

 more than half cheated us on the Lugg. Its waters 

 had already dropped deplorably low, and the trout, 

 failing the expected mayfly, regarded our smaller lures 

 with exasperating indifference. A wet July and 

 fresh water and revived fish seemed a certainty after 

 aU these rainless weeks. But not a bit of it ! Every 

 one remembers that July, so recent as it is, to say 

 nothing of the succeeding August. Many of us, 

 familiar with an American summer, felt for the first 

 time in our lives that we were breathing and feeling 

 day and night an American atmosphere in Great 

 142 



