286 AN OPEN CREEL 



the opinion that the Blagdon trout were lunching light 

 that day. My friend, I found, had not stirred a fish 

 since his loss, and two other anglers who passed by 

 had not killed anything either. Altogether, the pros- 

 pects looked bad. After lunch my friend decided to 

 retrace his steps, and I went on to explore, as we were 

 fully half-way round. The edge of the lake in this part 

 was rather shallow, but here and there were narrow 

 channels of the kind described, which certainly looked 

 as if they should yield something. It was not, how- 

 ever, till I came to the point where the lake gets a good 

 deal narrower that I saw a sign of another fish. Here 

 there was a regular dyke running out from the shore ; 

 it looked as if it might originally have been a road. 

 To fish it one had to cast right into the wind, and the 

 fly fell with more force than precision. At the mouth, 

 however, and in about five feet of water, a fish came at 

 my gold-bodied fly like a tiger and went off well hooked. 

 From its play I thought at first that it must be a big 

 rainbow. It came out of the water several times and 

 fought desperately for the open lake. The gut, how- 

 ever, was suited to the rod and fly, and the fish never 

 got out more than ten yards of line at a burst, even- 

 tually coming into the big net dead-beat. On the shore 

 it proved to be a brown trout, bright in colour, though 

 rather long in proportion to its girth. The spring 

 balance made it about four and a half pounds. I was 

 now well satisfied, having got a Blagdon trout in spite 

 of sticklebacks and other disadvantages, and having 

 saved what looked like being a blank. 



From the scene of triumph to the end of the lake the 

 water within reach of the rod seemed shallow, and the 



