FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 However widely anglers differ among themselves about the amount 

 and degree of secondary movement that should be given to the fly (and 

 they do differ considerably both in theory and practice), nearly all are 

 agreed that a low rod-point and a sunk fly are features of sound fishing; 

 yet I have known the contrary practice meet with remarkable success. 

 Any orthodox salmon-fisher watching for the first time the late Dr Begg, 

 of Reedsmouth, fishing the North Tyne which flowed at the foot of his gar- 

 den, must have pronounced him an ignorant bungler, for he used to fling 

 his flies (he always fished with two woolly, over -feathered things) at 

 right angles to the stream, and, raising his rod-point aloft, drew them 

 along the surface to his feet. Hopeless, one should say, especially as he 

 always fished with treble gut and never varied the size of his flies, no matter 

 what were the conditions of weather and water; yet in the season of 

 1867, when I first made acquaintance with the North Tyne, he killed 

 upwards of 150 salmon and grilse. 



Salmon almost invariably take up their station in the main stream; 

 it is therefore vain to look for them in those side channels which a great 

 river sometimes forms, and which often prove well worthy of the trout 

 fisher's attention. But in a high water it is sometimes profitable to fish 

 those backwaters where the current runs strongly in the contrary direc- 

 tion to the course of the river. One of the severest runs I ever had was 

 with a fish hooked in the backwater of the Pass Pool on the Leny above 

 Callander. I had nobody with me, and a hard job it was to follow the 

 salmon, which ran straight out of the pool into the rough rapids below. 

 Down, down he went, and down, down I followed him, waist deep at times 

 where trees stood in the flooded river. It was early in February and the 

 water was uncommonly cold, but I was hot enough by the time we got 

 down — ^the fish and I — to Black Donald's Pool, about 400 yards below the 

 Pass pool. Imagine my chagrin when I found I had taken a ducking for 

 nothing; the line lay loose in the water; probably the fish had broken 

 away as it caught among the rocks in that terrific rapid. I began winding 

 in disconsolately. Just then Anderson, Lord Moray's keeper, came along. 

 I was in the middle of a description of my mishap when I found the 

 shortened line pointing up stream, hanked on a rock, I supposed, and 

 was on the point of handing the rod to Anderson to release it, for I was 

 tired and cross, when I felt a pull — another, and another. The fish was 

 still on, and we soon had him out, a fine springer of 18^ lb. Since then 

 I have never neglected a likely backwater in a high river; but I must 

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