CLEAR WATERS 



cases a plethora of fingerlings may mean a heavily- 

 poached stream, in others an under-fished one. It 

 is as certain that the Claerwen is no longer poached as 

 that it regularly was so till ten years ago, when the lakes 

 were completed. 



There are a few little homesteads up the Claerwen as 

 indeed there are up the wilder Elan, before it disappears 

 into the waste. They have their backs to the wilder- 

 ness, count their sheep by the thousand, and take no 

 count of acres. Anxious to be more handy to the 

 pounders of Dol-y-mynach two or three years ago, I 

 made arrangements with an old lady flock-owner, in- 

 habiting a quaint little farmhouse above the Claerwen, 

 to put me up for two or three days. A brace of fish, 

 up to a pound each, was the rather scanty reward of 

 the afternoon of my arrival, a result not tempered 

 by the breaking away of two more good fish. A stiff 

 rod and drawn gut are an ill-assorted combination ; 

 I would sooner dispense with the last, however, than 

 the first and take my chance. The blend is well 

 enough for the dry fly, with all the leisurely delibera- 

 tion of both angler and fish, but when a pounder, bred 

 in mountain water, dashes up from the depths after a 

 blank half-hour, and startles you — well, yes — out of a 

 day-dream, the brief contact is apt to be more than 

 could fairly be asked of a drawn gut point. In a flash 

 it is all over, and you sit down to vain anathemas and 

 to that most depressing and baneful of all riverside 

 operations, the replacing of a fly, or perhaps worse still, 

 of half a cast, that through your own bungling or care- 

 lessness has been carried into the depths by a good fish. 



But the lakes on this occasion were low and clear. 

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