62 Rambles with a Fishing-Rod. 



from the bed of the river, as there is often an 

 expanse of small stones between the actual 

 stream and the actual bank. But this is in 

 many respects an advantage to the angler, for 

 there is no danger of losing casts and flies on 

 the branches of trees. On the other hand, there 

 is a great deal of very rough walking and 

 scrambling in many places, not only up and 

 down the banks, but among slippery stones of 

 all shapes and sizes ; and often there must be no 

 hesitation in wading above the knees. 



The first day we took the right bank, which 

 proved, however, in one sense, to be the wrong 

 one ; for near the village of Rubi, where we 

 struck the river, high wooded cliffs begin, 

 which overhang it for a mile, and these proved 

 quite a bar to fishing downward from the vil- 

 lage. The day was hot and bright, and a 

 morning's fishing up stream only produced half- 

 a-dozen small trout. But in one deep pool 

 beneath a rock, clear as crystal, fifteen or twenty 

 half-pound fish were seen quite still at the 

 bottom. The most lively grasshoppers, the 

 most tempting worms collected in the meadows, 

 on the finest of gut, let down from the rock 

 above, merely caused them to move with languid 



