MINNOW AND WORM 157 



hand, and so on. And it demands great expertness 

 in the use of rod and line. The clear-water wormer 

 must be able to pitch his bait into a tea cup, as the 

 saying is, and he must keep in constant touch with 

 it as it travels downstream towards him. But, 

 when all is admitted, I am not particularly fond 

 of the method, and, though I sometimes set out 

 determined to give it a thorough trial, after catching 

 a few fish I generally find myself getting bored. 

 But here again I differentiate between a river and a 

 burn, and it is the river which bores me, not the 

 burn. Given the conditions of low water and hot 

 weather which make clear- water worming a success, 

 on a river I enjoy myself far more by picking up odd 

 fish under trees and bushes with a dry fly. You 

 don't get so many, but you enjoy the catching of 

 them far more. 



Possibly as a clear-water wormer I am hampered 

 by not yearning for very big catches of trout at any 

 time. When I read in some of the old chronicles, 

 such as Henderson's My Life as an Angler, of creels 

 bursting, pockets stuffed, and a residue of fish slung 

 on withy twigs, I simply cannot understand the 

 frame of mind which requires satisfaction to brim 

 over in that manner. I am sure Mr. Henderson 

 could not have eaten sixty trout, and in the wilds 

 of Northumberland in those days he could hardly 

 have found means of despatching them to friends. 



