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replied (^uite seriously, " Very well, your lioiioiir, I'll do 

 it. Shall we go up or down stream r"' I remarked that 

 it was for him to hnd the fish, and therefore left hiin to 

 make his own choice. " Put on a silver minnow " said 

 he. " V\e will go up to the pier." This is a tongue of 

 land just below the tail of the Portna Weir, shown in 

 illustrations. We mounted the minnow on a fine trace of 

 annealed steel wire, no thicker than a piece of trout gut, 

 with only one swivel in the head of the Devon and another 

 at the end of the winch line. For fishing in low, clear 

 waters this wire is invaluable, and of the manj' scores of 

 salmon and })ike that I have killed upon it, I never had an 

 accident with it, or lost a fish through breakage. As we 

 started the boat, I tluew my minnow some distance astern, 

 and jumped it up and down in the water to get out line. 

 Whilst doing so there was a tremendous pull, which. 

 nearly snatched the loosely-held rod out of my hands. " A 

 fish !" I exclaimed, and pushing the boat to the shore, we 

 fought it out on the bank, but the fish gave a flying leap, 

 and we saw at once that it was a big trout, and not a 

 salmon, that we had on. He fought gamely, but ulti- 

 mately came to net, and he had blown the silver minnow 

 up the nine foot steel trace over the top swivel, and it was 

 there suspended when the net was put under the trout. 

 I give this experience of a fish blowing the bait out of its 

 mouth because there is a conflict of opinion amongst our 

 fishing authorities upon this subject. Personally, I have 

 no doubt whatever as to the powers of propulsion possessed 

 by trout and salmon, in expelling either a fly, worm, or 

 minnow. Not that I ever caught a trout or a salmon on 

 a worm in ni}" life, but I have seen them so caught, and 

 I have also seen a bunch of worms blown several feet up 

 the trace, over coarse knots in thick salmon gut. But 

 this is a digression, for Avliich, perhaps, I ought to apologise, 

 and get back to that big trout, which we have left all this 

 time on the grass, close to old John Blair's " sally-bush." 

 The old soldier, who haunts this particular spot in quest 

 of " trouts," looks at our three-and-a-half pounder, and 

 opines that it is a beaut}^ Old John foregathers, and 



