SOME KENNET DAYS 59 



in the angle at my own side. Here matters were 

 complicated by a wire stretched across from the bank 

 to the post in the middle of the river. This prevented 

 my following, so the fight was all to begin over again. 

 A repetition of the coaxing tactics was ultimately 

 successful, and in the end he came to the net and 

 was mine own. The spring balance made him out 

 three and a half pounds a long, thin fish, which ought 

 to have weighed quite four pounds. But I was not 

 disposed to be critical. A fish of that size had not 

 often come my way to the dry fly in April never. 



Two other trout fed within a few yards of where the 

 first was hooked. One rose, was missed, and went 

 down. The other was in a quite inaccessible place in 

 the farthest corner of the angle, the one spot in the 

 world worse than that of my fight. To reach it one 

 had to cast over the side of the weed-rack, with the 

 certain knowledge that breaking was inevitable if the 

 fish was hooked. I left a fly in the weed-rack and 

 gave it up, yielding the fish to a brother angler who 

 had just arrived. I thought mine had been a pretty 

 good fight, but it pales into insignificance beside the 

 one he had afterwards. For, casting over the piles 

 and wire, he hooked the trout. It ran upstream for a 

 wonder, and he had hopes. But his line caught on 

 one of the posts, and he could not get it clear. After 

 waiting some time, with the fish tugging away thirty 

 yards upstream, he decided on a desperate remedy. 

 Twenty-five yards below the weed-rack is a railway- 

 bridge. Paying off line, he retreated to the bridge, 

 climbed up on to it, and, getting a straight pull, freed 

 his line. And then the fish, now some seventy yards 



