EARLY DAYS 15 



fortnight on and off during tropical weather and had 

 had remarkable sport considering everything — one 

 of the things to be considered being that it was 

 apparently a discovery on my part that it held 

 trout at all. The particular memory, however, is 

 not so much of the fishing as of a notable thunder- 

 storm which raged the whole of one night. We were 

 awake for hours watching the lightning as it played 

 about the Needles, a wonderful sight. It was not, 

 however, this impressive display alone that kept me 

 awake, it was the thought of the fishing which would 

 follow such welcome rain. I made sure of a day 

 which would beat all my previous records and which 

 would prove my theory correct that a brook but a 

 yard wide may contain pounders and better if you 

 put it to the proof. Alas, I never did put it to the 

 proof for unexpected events made it necessary for 

 me to depart on the day after the storm. I think 

 I had touched fourteen ounces, however, which was 

 something. 



I have another odd memory of the same stream. 

 One day as I was following it up, fly-rod in hand, I 

 came on another youth of somewhere near my own 

 age who was engaged in a queer form of fishing. He 

 was apparently employing expensive gut casts as 

 set-lines, and seemed to have adorned each with 

 fragments of cork. He had no rod, and I came to 

 the conclusion that he was the sort of individual who 



V( 



