CLEAR WATERS 



me elsewhere in Shropshire — once, as related, to my 

 salvation, and once to my undoing. So in this state 

 of perplexity I will leave this region of babbling brooks 

 and return to the Herefordshire Lugg, where such 

 monstrously overgrown red hackles and blue duns 

 would, I am sure, be regarded with horror and amaze- 

 ment both by fishermen and fish. 



It is curious what a hking Herefordshire grayling, at 

 any rate, seem to have for very low water. In my 

 experience, and the much more convincing one of 

 anglers who live upon the Lugg, the more hopeless 

 looking the conditions in this particular the brighter 

 the prospect of a good basket. Of many Septembers 

 in which I have fished this water, the only one which 

 proved for the entire week a comparative failure was 

 after the wet summer of 191 2. Previously, each 

 occasion had seemed worse in appearance than the 

 last, yet the grayling, I may fairly say, took better 

 and better with each succeeding autumn, till their 

 partiality for a red tag and a mid-blue seemed to cul- 

 minate in the great drought of 191 1, when the river 

 really did look absolutely hopeless to the ordinary eye. 

 And no wonder, for hardly a drop of rain had fallen, 

 or, to be precise, scarcely a drop of fresh water had 

 run into the river since the preceding April. In the 

 heart of Wales, west of the Wye, the fountains of the 

 hills had been loosed in August and the mountain 

 pastures were again fresh and green, and snowy 

 wreaths of water were once more gHstening against 

 the long parched cliffs. But down in Herefordshire 

 the streams were still almost voiceless in the deadly 

 stupor of the drought of a century. In June we had 

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