294 AN OPEN CREEL 



covered. One, a rainbow of about two pounds, was lost 

 after a longish fight. The other took me at the 

 entrance to a ditch, and went off like a mad thing, 

 running out thirty or forty yards of line in two rushes, 

 and making me tremble for the gut, which was rather 

 fine. But I got him at last, a big brown trout which 

 weighed about an ounce less than four pounds, and 

 should have been considerably more. The fly was 

 certainly a salmon-fly, but it was several sizes smaller 

 than any salmon-fly I had used at Blagdon before, so 

 I was pleased. 



Tuesday was certainly not "my day out." I saw 

 never a rise before 6 p.m., and then, just as the fun 

 was beginning, the cold wind, strong all day, but 

 apparently dropping, freshened once more, and all was 

 up with my chances on the Blagdon shore. I got one 

 brown trout of two and a half pounds with a Silver 

 Doctor, No. 9, and that was all. M., on the other 

 hand, was very successful, for he returned from the far 

 and sheltered shore with two trout, one a rainbow of 

 about one and three-quarter pounds, the other a really 

 big brown trout of five and a quarter pounds. This, I 

 believe, was the heaviest fish caught at Blagdon that 

 year, and he got it on a dry Wickham and with his 

 little nine-foot rod. He would probably have caught 

 others, for they were rising well, but had spent most of 

 the evening over a monster which was feeding steadily, 

 but would not take anything he could offer it. 



On this subject of small flies and Blagdon trout, it 

 may be interesting to state what those caught had been 

 feeding on. In one we found some snails, in two or 

 three a stickleback or so ; but the bulk of the food con- 



