CLEAR WATERS 



and thence drop quietly on to the surface. For it is 

 surprising how close a feeding fish will sometimes hug 

 the sheer cliff, and this mode of offering him the fly- 

 has often proved a seductive one. 



There is a small lead mine a mile or so up the Glen- 

 ridding beck, mercifully the only eyesore of the kind 

 in the whole district. It is of very old standing, 

 and employs some fifty men. These miners, how- 

 ever, are not as other miners — the men of Glamor- 

 gan, Lanark, and Midlothian, for instance, whose 

 truculent and predatory raids are the terror of all 

 decent fishermen. They are dalesmen mainly, real 

 countrymen, often bred and born on the lake shore, 

 pleasant and civil-spoken friendly fellows, and thorough 

 sportsmen. A handful of them are fly fishers, though 

 others worm the becks in high water or stand over a 

 baited hook on the lake shore at evening after the 

 manner previously alluded to ; but both sorts are 

 keen fishermen. 



The Glenridding beck pours and has poured into 

 the lakehead for two or three generations quite a 

 lusty torrent of water, always of a thick milky colour 

 from the lead hush. Deadly to the trout, one would 

 be inclined to say ? but not a bit of it ! On the 

 contrary, its mouth is a favourite feeding-place of 

 fish, and the gravelly stretch about it that has been 

 formed in the course of years is the favourite haunt 

 of the stationary bait-fisher. Nor does the beck 

 discolour the lake one atom. A hundred yards out 

 almost every trace of taint has gone, the colouring 

 matter no doubt sunk to the bottom. And this 

 gravelly shore, where the beck comes in, is a fitting 

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