CLEAR WATERS 



swishing, rippling streams among the meadows near 

 Corwen, easily fished and easily waded waters, and for 

 that reason less profitable to spend time over. It 

 was one day late in April, and the river was in lovely 

 condition. But I had laboured nevertheless all morn- 

 ing without even touching a fish, and it was about 

 mid-afternoon when I found myself at the bottom of 

 the long, straight half-mile of wide, shallow water 

 below Corwen bridge, into which one would usually 

 wade and fish across and down. I suppose I must 

 have seen a fish move, otherwise I should most 

 assuredly never have faced up-stream and put my fly 

 on to such an utterly impossible-looking spot of water. 

 For on the shallowest side of the broad shallow the 

 water, being then a little above normal height, was 

 rippling three or four inches deep along the foot of a 

 grassy, briary bank that stood back a bit in ordinary 

 times from the river's pebbly edge. At any rate, 

 close to the grass, in water hardly deep enough to 

 cover his back fin, I secured a goodly half-pound trout. 

 While engaged in disposing of it, I beheld another fish 

 bestir himself a little higher up in the same uncanny 

 sort of place, uncanny, that is to say, for such a big 

 river, and poke his head up close to the grassy foot of 

 the bank. The water did not cover my brogues, but 

 putting out a longish line, this one took greedily at 

 the first offer, and proved the equal of the last. To 

 shorten my story, I fished up the foot of that hedge, 

 dry as a board in normal water, and throwing my fly 

 as close as possible to the grass, the rippling water 

 being nowhere more than four or five inches deep, I 

 killed seven half-pounders, one after the other — an 

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