16 TROUT FISHING 



would be a poacher if he knew how, but who, 

 fortunately, did not know and would have some 

 difficulty in learning. I scorned him silently and 

 passed on. Oddly enough, some years later, I 

 traced this amateur poacher in a valued friend of 

 later date, and found that he retained a memory of 

 an offensive person with a fishing-rod who had once 

 passed him on the side of that little stream. A 

 casual naming of the locality made the incident leap 

 to both our minds. My friend certainly is no fisher- 

 man, so my early instinct had been correct. But 

 it was a good thing that I did not give expression to 

 it, for he has ever been a singularly capable boxer, 

 and my first introduction to him might have been 

 less propitious than it was. 



One learns something new from every fresh water 

 one visits if Fate is at all amiable. I remember 

 one lesson which that streamlet taught me, I think 

 for the first time, the lesson that sometimes one 

 must depend entirely on the sense of touch for 

 notice of a rise. There was a deep run under a 

 high bank (of course, to bring the water " to scale " 

 I ought to insist on inches rather than feet), and it 

 turned a sharp corner at the bottom end. Two or 

 three times I had spoilt my chances there by trying 

 to see over the bank as I fished, to the great con- 

 sternation of the half-pounder which I yearned to 

 catch. At last I decided that I must cast round 



