TWO RED LETTER SALMON 121 



when I drove over the bridge on Monday morning before 

 the village was awake. Not for the first time, there- 

 fore, the kindly welcome of host and hostess was pointed 

 with mutual condolences. 



The October casts, so far, had been disappointing 

 below Kelso. The Tweed anglers above that town had 

 been more favoured, being beyond the malign influ- 

 ences of the Teviot, which has a wonderful facility for 

 gathering up anything that comes from the clouds, and 

 sending down dirt and volume to the beats eastward 

 of the Kelso Tweedometer. 



The records of a week such as this was to be are not 

 worth telling, for men neither like to write about their 

 own disappointments unless they can treat them from 

 the comic side, nor to read about the woes of others 

 unless they have the unhappy gift of gloating over 

 them. Let this indication, then, cover several days, 

 and no more about it, except that the time arrived 

 when I caught a fish badly scored by seals, which in- 

 fested the tideway, and that I worked hard for odd 

 hits and misses with small fish on other days. 



My best fish, in all senses of the word, was a godsend, 

 and I rose her with a full-sized Wilkinson. She weighed 

 31^ lb., and was the largest baggit which either Sligh 

 or Guthrie could remember being caught in the Tweed. 

 Up to the date of capture I believe it was the heaviest 

 fish taken with a fly that season, but a week later a 

 lady angler in Sprouston dub above took one of 35 lb. 

 My fish gave me a rousing bit of sport, lasting a little 

 over the accepted average time of a pound weight to 

 the minute. But the circumstances warranted five 

 minutes' grace. It was one of the very bad days, 

 with blustering hailstorms, and evening was coming 

 on. A grilse had risen short, and contributed another 

 item to the losses account (nine in four days was the 



