174 TROUT FISHING 



hopefully. There was a fish of just under four 

 pounds which I had lost three times in one season, 

 and finally killed on a Mayfly. But to find a five- 

 pounder taking small flies on a second occasion 

 was beyond expectation, for such fish are very 

 incurious about small flies as a rule. 



I once had a Mayfly day on the Kennet which 

 must have totalled up a large number of lost 

 pounds. It seemed to my excited imagination 

 that I hooked all the biggest trout in the fishery 

 one after the other. They varied from four pounds 

 to six pounds. I do not think there was anything 

 over six pounds though I was quite in the vein to 

 have lost Big Ben himself had I been able to find 

 him. Big Ben was a local institution, said to 

 weigh fifteen pounds but he never gladdened my 

 eyes or subsequently filled my heart with sorrow. 

 His smaller brethren did their best, however, and 

 I was quite sufficiently desperate at the day's end 

 with a paltry brace just over the limit of a pound 

 and a half in my basket and a long list of defeats 

 in my mind. 



Sedge fishing has provided most of us with 

 experience of trout which were presumably of 

 unusual size, but it is not at all easy to be certain 

 even in one's own mind. I well remember a tre- 

 mendous battle with a Kennet trout hooked on a 

 sedge when it was nearly dark. That fish took me 



