SALMON OF THE AWE. 93 



top. and are placed at a rather inconvenient distance from one another, 

 they are apt to make a nervous man think. One friend, I can well 

 remember, when I asked him to fish the pool, absolutely declined, 

 asking me if I took him for a " blooming acrobat." Below again we 

 come to the Cruive Pool, a long cast from another staging, the fish 

 lying on the far side, just about as far as an 18 ft. rod will get you. 

 But be there in July when the sun is setting, the redder the better, 

 behind the hills on the far side, and suddenly the silent oily water 

 becomes broken with countless rises, also on the far side. Put on then 

 a cast of sea trout flies and use your salmon rod, otherwise you will 

 never reach them. Do not bother with a landing net, but run them 

 ashore on the shelving bank below you and let your gillie take them 

 off the hooks, and get to casting again as soon as you can. The rise, 

 though a good one, lasts, I assure you, but a tantalisingly short time, and 

 then the pool is as quiet and oily as ever, and you would feel inclined 

 to stake your bottom dollar that there was not a sea trout within miles. 



The Thunder and Lightning and the Blue Doctor are the local lures, 

 and kill well. One year, when the river was low and the fish as stiff 

 as pokers, I tied a "medicine" of my own that I fondly hoped would 

 form a standard fly on that water, for its effect was admirable at that 

 time. It was an olive fly, body olive silk ribbed with silver, tag a golden 

 pheasant, dark olive hackles, a light mixed wing with golden pheasant 

 topping. Having caught several fish that year with this fly, I got 

 Messrs. Eaton and Deller to dress me a stock, and must candidly admit 

 that never since then have I caught a single salmon with the " olives." 



There are two pools, however, above the Long Pool that I have 

 not attempted to describe — the lower one the Yellow Pool, an ideal, leg 

 of mutton-shaped piece of water, where a beginner could not well go 

 wrong, and above it the Bridge Pool, so called because the railway line 

 crosses the neck of it. It was in this pool that I once had a rare bit 

 of sport. The whole of the water I have attempted to describe was 

 then hotel water, the fishermen staying at the inn having the right to 

 fish for a nominal sum — 55. a day I think it was. But the river had 

 been in fair order, and several good fish had been got. It was then 

 rapidly getting on the small side. The records of the previous week 

 having been published in the columns of the Field, the inevitable result 



