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82 CHATS ON ANGLING. 



fly a second time he made a big splashy rise ; I struck, and was in him. 

 Down he went into the next pool like a mad thing. The travelling, 

 for me, was bad, and the gillie had to steady me by holding on to 

 the band of my Norfolk jacket. I held the fish as hard as I dared, 

 but he was bent on running, out of one pool into and through the 

 next ; race as I would over the wet and slippery rocks, I never could 

 get on terms with him, and he led me by some forty or fifty yards of 

 line. As he had never shown so far and was playing so hard, both 

 my gillie and I thought we were into a real big one. We were now 

 nearing the falls above the sea pool ; I was pretty near pumped out, 

 so some resolute measures had to be taken. I accordingly, whilst 

 holding on for all I was worth, sent the gillie ahead to stone him up. 

 No sooner was he turned than he was done, and the gaff in him, and 

 then only did we find out how he was hooked. He weighed no more 

 than 141b., and had we known where the hook was, and had we not 

 put him down as a real big fish, he would have never have been 

 permitted to play such pranks and lead us such a dance. Had I held 

 him really hard, his down-stream rush would soon have finished him, 

 as the water running through his gills would have choked him. 



One day we decided to try the Croll}', wishing to sample some of 

 those beautiful fish, and, as it meant a seven-mile walk over the hills, 

 we left our salmon rods at home, taking instead only double-handed 

 trout rods. On arriving, we found the wind very foul, blowing partly 

 across and partly up the river, so that it was no easy matter to command 

 the pools at all properly with our small rods. One fish in particular 

 annoyed us by showing constantly in a part of the water we could 

 barely reach and could not command, so we instituted a kind of angling 

 tournament, each of us in turn trying to get over him properly. Our 

 gillies were watching intently and open-mouthed. One of them, Pat 

 by name, had a peculiarly ugly mouth, with heavy, protruding lips ; 

 and whilst he was watching thus intently, the unkind wind brought 

 my friend's fly, a big Jock Scott, right into his mouth, fixed it firmly 

 into his lower lip, the forward cast sending it well home, and nearly 

 dragging poor Pat into the river. We none of us felt equal to attacking 

 the fly in its weird position, so we sent Pat down to the village, a mile 

 or more away, to get the local doctor to extract it. Down he went, 



