CLEAR WATERS 



waters at Cresswell crags. These days were not 

 consecutive, but in two succeeding years, in May 

 and June respectively. They are only noteworthy 

 for the curious relationship in weight and number of 

 fish they bore to one another. On the first occasion 

 two of us killed just fifty trout weighing twenty 

 pounds. The next year the mayfly happened to be 

 on, and though being caught unprepared and un- 

 provided with patterns, the same friend and myself 

 killed with other flies in the same waters twenty-five 

 fish also weighing twenty pounds : exactly half the 

 number and precisely the same aggregate weight ! 

 And as on each evening we had a three-mile tramp 

 home to our quarters bearing our burden, though no 

 doubt cheerfully, I have further reasons for remem- 

 bering the incident. But did a tight basket strap 

 ever really tire an angler ? 



This was just within Nottingham, a shire otherwise 

 associated vaguely in my mind with wonderful winches 

 holding hundreds of yards of line from which the 

 natives hurl substantial baits of mysterious kinds 

 with trained precision across leisurely expansive rivers. 

 But our days were in the Dukeries, not on the Trent, 

 a limestone region where trout seem to wax and 

 flourish in every bit of water that will cover their 

 back fin. As I have skirted Derbyshire thus briefly 

 and memorably to myself in late years, so in boyhood, 

 more frequently but with nothing approaching such 

 baskets, have I plied a rod upon the edge of Yorkshire — 

 on the Wear and upper Tees in the now besmirched 

 palatinate of Durham. These two rivers rise in neigh- 

 bouring wilds and run out of the high Durham moors 

 292 



