ON RIVERS 85 



freshet brought. They quitted the deep pools, to 

 which they had been confined for months, and roamed 

 about over places which a few days before you could 

 have crossed dry-shod. These are the very places 

 into which the shrewd fisherman first casts his line. 

 The fish run to them during a flood as instinctively 

 as they seek the gravelly shallows in the spawning 

 season. It is not natural that at any time of the 

 year there should be great stretches of dry sand or 

 dry gravel in the bed of any river. How these have 

 come to be common will be shown in another chapter. 

 In a state of nature the whole of the bed, or nearly 

 the whole, would be under water. Migrating to 

 unwonted places, the fish are merely reverting to the 

 habits of their ancestors. We are sometimes told 

 that salmon do not begin to " take " until the flood 

 is falling. That is true of certain streams, those 

 which, having towns or many villages in their water- 

 sheds, bring down much foreign refuse in the first 

 gush of a flood ; but it does not hold good on rivers 

 in regions, such as the Highlands, where the rain finds 

 uncontaminated ways down the hillsides. There, 

 very often, the salmon rush at lures whenever it 

 becomes clear to them that a flood is really coming. 

 They are not particular as to lures, and are ready to 

 show sport on very casual provocation. There are 

 many of them in the lee of every peninsula and on 

 the gravel-beds or sand-banks which the river has 

 submerged. 



Having reached the autumn, our pen has involun- 

 tarily broken from its habitual diffidence. It has 



