BOAT FISHING 89 



relationship to the then Home Secretary drew upon 

 me some attention from the Royal Irish Constabulary, 

 although I certainly found no necessity for their pro- 

 tection. Paddy has his faults, but I do not think 

 he has any inclination to visit the sins of the fathers 

 upon the children. We secured the services of two 

 experienced fishermen and their boat for the period of 

 our stay, and beyond the fact that they loved whisky 

 ' not wisely but too well,' and were quarrelsome in their 

 cups, we had little fault to find with them. Their 

 boat was more like a substantial gig than a Tay or 

 Tweed coble, but a flat-bottomed craft would not have 

 held the water enough for a drift, and would certainly 

 not have been safe in the violent squalls and heavy 

 storms which we occasionally had to encounter. The 

 favourite fly was a moderate sized sea-trout fly, with a 

 rough body of fiery brown pigs wool and a plain 

 wing of native manufacture, and I had not then 

 sufficient confidence and self-assertion to experiment 

 with the smarter specimens of the tackle-maker's art 

 which we had brought with us from the metropolis. 

 The method of fishing was like that for ordinary loch 

 trout, rowing tip-wind and drifting sideways along the 

 likely bays and headlands, casting before you with 

 the wind with a fourteen-foot rod and a moderate 

 length of line. The sea-trout, which were numerous 



