CLEAR WATERS 



have been worried to death with clumsy methods will 

 come with avidity at fine tackle properly presented 

 to them. If it had been a dry-fly performance, it 

 would not have been so extraordinary. But my friend 

 fished wet as related, and down stream with two flies. 

 I tell him it is a mercy his wife was with him. For 

 though a wife's evidence in criminal cases is, I believe, 

 inadmissible on her husband's behalf, in fishing cases 

 I regard it as much the most valuable of all. Judging 

 from my own experience of anglers' wives their presence 

 is the most effective curb to the natural growth of 

 a fish story, and they have a marvellous memory 

 for blank days which their men-folk have forgotten. 

 The hero of these well-authenticated triumphs is, as 

 I said, a believer in down-stream fishing. Occasionally 

 he goes into Dorsetshire and fishes a dry-fly water for 

 heavy trout with some dry-fly friends. He tells me 

 he often kills more than they do, with two wet flies 

 down stream. I have tried to make him understand 

 the egregious nature of the crime he is perpetrating. 

 But it is of no use, for he doesn't even know what a 

 dry-fly purist means. 



Higher up the Till in the Chillingham castle water 

 the trout would appear to hold their own more success- 

 fully against the grayling, judging from a fair basket 

 I once killed there. Fortunately for any angler who 

 has that privilege the river doesn't run through the 

 park. A Welsh bull is bad enough, but from what 

 I have seen and heard of these famous wild cattle a 

 day's fishing among them would not justify the classic 

 designation of angling as the contemplative man's 

 recreation. 

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