THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 



up in the mountains for half-pounders than a beck, 

 even if there is good water, for six-or-eight-to-the- 

 pounders at less than half the altitude. Indeed, with 

 a congenial companion, if possible, there are few things 

 to me more thoroughly enjoyable than a June day on 

 a mountain tarn. But you must not take it too 

 seriously from a merely fishing point of view, for tarns 

 are queer things, though always interesting. Some 

 writers have a habit of alluding to them airily and 

 with a touch of contempt, as if they were mere places 

 for schoolboys to fill baskets in. There may be such 

 tarns in the Highlands of Scotland or in the west 

 of Ireland, but except an occasional one that nature 

 has overstocked with hungry fingerlings, such is not 

 my experience in other parts of the country, though 

 I do not claim a particularly wide one in this respect. 

 All those I know, whether they are a mile or two 

 hundred yards in length, are extraordinarily capri- 

 cious, and any one who fills his basket, by fair daylight 

 fishing at any rate, may write it down as one of his 

 red-letter days. There is one tarn, to be sure, or 

 rather a lake, for it is nearly three miles long, though 

 very narrow, in this neighbourhood where you would 

 generally, I think, under reasonable conditions, fill 

 a basket with quarter-pounders, and that is Hawes- 

 water, an outlying preserve on the Lowther Castle 

 property. But this is not because it is preserved, 

 but because the fish are by nature remarkably free 

 risers. It is notoriously overstocked, and the fish are 

 too small, but not despicably so, and, moreover, 

 run curiously even-sized. Even that deep-water, 

 bottom-feeding, non-rising deHcacy, the char, which 



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