94 TROUT FISHING 



conscientious efforts had been rewarded by the 

 latter. And so home. 



I shall never solve the mystery of those great fish 

 in a river which was supposed to have lost its stock. 

 I should have been tempted to think them ghosts 

 but for the fact that I felt one of them. Their 

 appearance under water was strongly suggestive of 

 the phantom ships in the late Mr. Hope Hodgson's 

 extraordinary book The Ghost Pirates. Presumably 

 what had happened was that the pollution had been 

 enough to kill the fly-food of the river down for a 

 time, but not enough to kill the big trout. They 

 possibly took to bottom-feeding from necessity, and 

 so to a large extent vanished from human ken. In 

 that part much of the water is deep and heavy and 

 trout resolutely near the bottom would be quite 

 invisible. 



