155 



can fisK together comfortably, one in tlie stem and the other 

 in the stern, but I set my face against a third rod. The 

 possibilities of hooking monster trout by this daping pro- 

 cess, keeps the nerves of the beginner in a state of tension. 

 The great difficulty which all beginners have to overcome 

 is the temptation to strike when the trout rises. So surely 

 as you do, so surely will you miss your fish. These big 

 Derg trout come up with a head and tail rise, like a 

 salmon, and the golden rule is, " Never strike till the tail 

 disappears." It usually takes a day or two of practice 

 before this rule can be uniformly observed, for the boil with 

 which those six-pounders come up is apt to disconcert even 

 experienced English fishermen. 



Going out to the fishing ground one morning, we trailed 

 two-inch Devon minnows — one blue and the other silver — 

 and got into a shoal of perch. We crossed and re-crossed 

 their hunting ground, and killed ten or a dozen splendid 

 perch, ranging from ^\h. up to l|lb. When filleted, and 

 fried in egg and bread crumbs, these fish were delicious. 

 That same evening, on our way home, I mounted a 3|in. 

 gold spoon, using a 14ft. salmon rod, and thus hooked one 

 of the monsters of Lough Derg. For an hour that fish 

 doggedly bored in 15ft. of water, and never moved more 

 than a dozen yards at a time. I could make no greater 

 impression upon this fish than I could upon a submerged 

 tree. It was getting dark; we were two hours late for 

 dinner, and we had a five-mile drive before us. I finally 

 brought matters to a crisis by handing the rod to my chum, 

 taking the line in my hands, as in sea-fishing, and starting 

 to haul that monster to the surface. But he refused to 

 come, struggled violently, and, finally, the thick salmon 

 gut trace snapped ! ^Yliatever that fish was — whether 

 salmon or pike — ^he must have been a leviathan, and my 

 chum will never forgive me for thus recklessly losing him. 

 When lamenting his loss at the landing-stage, an ex-police- 

 man told us he had, the previous season, killed a 201b. trout 

 in Derg, on a big spoon made out of a shoe-horn. This state- 

 ment was confirmed subsequently by several credible wit- 

 nesses who saw the fish weiched. 



