SOME TINY WATERS 35 



But the Pcnydwddwr, tliougli no Amazon, is 

 too wide a water for this chapter, which should 

 contain nothing across which a young man could not 

 jump pretty often in each quarter of a mile. I 

 should like to include in it some of the extraordinary 

 little streams which I have seen in the New Forest, 

 and which, I am told, contain trout. They are 

 very curious trickles, and should provide some 

 difficult and tangled fishing, but I have never been 

 in the way of trying one. Worthy of separate classi- 

 fication, perhaps, are the mill-leats, which are often 

 to be found beside the wet-fly streams of Devonshire, 

 Wales, and other districts. Many anglers pass these 

 places by with scorn. Nor will I seek to dissuade 

 them, for there is not much room on a mill-leat for 

 more than one rod, and there is no reason why it 

 should be bruited abroad that the fish in it are better 

 than those of the main river, brighter, fatter, and 

 heavier in proportion to their length. Besides, 

 it would be no use telling them that the mill-leat 

 has a bright gravel bed and quite an abundance 

 of food-producing weeds. They look at it, perhaps, 

 and they see that what with its natural narrowness 

 and the drooping grasses at each side, it offers no 

 more than a foot of water on which to place a fly. 

 So they say " Pooh ! " 



But what battles I have had with the quarter- 

 pounders and six-ounccrs in that foot of water I 



