THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 



angler how to play a fish would be mighty little good 

 here ! There is no time to reel in during these fast 

 and furious early stages as the trout runs down towards 

 you or darts like lightning for a submerged bush. 

 And with a longish line out these critical moments 

 are inevitable, while as for holding the point of your 

 rod up, you have got to hold it at just such an angle 

 as the all-embracing foliage for the moment admits of. 

 A half-pound fish will give you no end of a time in 

 such situations for about thirty seconds. After that 

 another minute, perhaps, may see him in the net. 

 Though if perchance you are a fixture, as often happens 

 where the depth of an uneven slippery bottom varies 

 from one to three or more feet, you may have had to 

 let him run down stream a long way, and be forced 

 to reel him on fine gut, by slow stages up a rapid 

 current, which is a slow and ticklish business. A 

 three-quarter-pounder, which is always possible in 

 the Avon, will give you anywhere in its waters, and 

 above all in these very prevalent awkward places, 

 some really stirring moments. You should not be 

 wholly ungrateful if you get him safely in at all, and 

 the encounter, if successful, will possibly occupy five 

 minutes, which will seem like a quarter of an hour. 

 I am talking, of course, of real honest half- and three- 

 quarter-pounders, not those lesser fry which anglers, 

 particularly those accustomed to waters where trout 

 run large sometimes, airily allude to as such. A half- 

 pounder in the Kennet or the Test is by comparison 

 a poor, immature weakling, who in his own waters, 

 unvexed by trailing boughs and rocks, and torrents 

 and sunken bushes, may be handled with something 



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