194 AN OPEN CREEL 



drawn, so the fight was no mean one. But at last I 

 won and got him into the net, and so triumphantly 

 ashore. 



He was not a three-pounder at all, only weighing one 

 pound fourteen ounces. I don't despise a grayling of 

 one pound fourteen ounces far from it ; but he 

 certainly looked much more in the water. And I kept 

 on making similar miscalculations with nearly every 

 subsequent fish. In the next I was certain of having 

 found a monster perhaps I had, but as he broke the 

 3X gut, I cannot prove it and in the next after that, 

 which refused a red quill, now tied on stronger gut, but 

 accepted a Brunton's fancy. Again I was a pound too 

 sanguine ; he weighed one pound thirteen ounces. And 

 so it was with every grayling afterwards which I caught 

 after having seen him, and most of the sport was the 

 result of stalking individual fish. One, indeed, looked 

 so vast as he lay in a shallow ripple well out in mid- 

 stream that even now I can hardly credit him with 

 having only been one pound thirteen ounces. Whether 

 it was the light, or the magnifying power of Avon 

 water, or my ardent desire some day to get a three- 

 pounder, I should not like to say, but some cause or 

 other made each forecast hopelessly wrong. With a 

 trouj, oddly enough, it was not so. He was in plain 

 view rising over some dark weed, and he took a red 

 quill, and fulfilled my expectations on the spring 

 balance one and three quarter pounds. But though 

 smaller than they seemed, the grayling were a beautiful 

 level lot, and the nine which were kept weighed fourteen 

 and a quarter pounds together, none being more than 

 one pound fourteen ounces. It was a notable day. 



