34 TROUT FISHING 



out, I hung my coat to dry on a bush and 

 meditated. 



The Forsaken Burn, which comes out of the west, 

 was an odd contrast to the turbid Penydwddwr, 

 being at its lowest. It looked lifeless and its pools 

 were in parts positively bescummed as a result of 

 the dry weather. Evidently the storm had been 

 very local, and the western hills had known nothing 

 of it. By way of doing something while my coat 

 dried in the sun and wind, I made a cast into the 

 nearest pool, and, to my surprise, immediately rose 

 a good trout, which gave a run, a jump, and was off. 

 After that I fished carefully upstream for some little 

 distance, and in each pool had a very similar experi- 

 ence. Altogether I must have spent an hour on the 

 stream, and hooked quite a dozen trout of decent 

 size. But I did not land one. It was a curious, 

 though unsatisfying, adventure, and I returned to 

 my coat in a worse temper than ever. But the day 

 turned out not so badly after all. I put on the 

 biggest and darkest flies I had, a zulu and a cochy- 

 bonddu on No. 5 or No. 6 hooks, and started to 

 fish my way homewards. And at once I discovered 

 that the Penydwddwr was not too thick, after all. 

 The trout simply raced after the flies, and I made 

 a good basket of twenty-two in a comparatively 

 short time, besides losing a good many, which were, 

 of course, the biggest. 



