TOM PURDIE 45 



the torrent so impetuous that nice tackle was by no 

 means requisite. 



In a low clear water you must be somewhat 

 dilatory in striking : you often see the heave of the 

 water and a break before the fish has actually 

 seized your fly. Give him time to turn his head in 

 his way back to his seat, to which a salmon always 

 returns after rising at the fly. Tom Purdie gave 

 me an account of a fish that had perplexed him 

 greatly by his non-observance of this rule, as nearly 

 as possible in the following words. He might have 

 used fewer certainly, but Tom was not laconic. 



' I had," said he, " risen a sawmon three suc- 

 cessive days at the throat of Caddon-water fut, and 

 on the fourth day I was determined to bring him to 

 book ; and when he rose as usual, I went up to 

 Caddon Wa's, namely, the pool opposite the ruins 

 of Caddon Lee, where there had been a terrace 

 garden facing the south ; and on returning I tried 

 my old friend, when he rose again without touching 

 the heuck : but I got a glimpse o' him, and saw he 

 was a sawmon o' the biggest sort. I then went down 

 the river to a lower pool, and in half an hour came 

 up again and changed my heuck. I began to sus- 

 pect that having raised the fish so often, I had be- 

 come too anxious, and given him too little law or 

 jerked the heuck away before he had closed his 

 mouth upon it. And as I had a heavy rod and good 

 line, and the castin' line, which I had gotten thrae 

 the Sherra, had three fadom o' pleit gut at the end 

 of it, and the flee was buskit on a three plies o' 

 sawmon gut, sae I was na feard for my tackle. I 



M 



