CASTING AS A BEGINNER. 15 



The river was low and practically no water ran 

 over the fir trunks which, laid side by side, 

 formed the slope over which the river when full 

 rushed with plenty of red or white foam. The 

 pool itself was just about forty yards square 

 so that every bit of it could be reached from 

 one side or the other. Under the escarpment 

 of fir poles the quiet bottle-green water was 

 perhaps five or six feet deep shelving gradually 

 away to a shallowing and shingly beach. As 

 this beach was due west of the weir, anyone 

 fishing in the evening enjoyed or rather endured 

 the disadvantage of having the setting sun or 

 its warm afterglow behind him, and I could 

 not but remember how seldom any good fish 

 were taken by anglers in that position. The 

 day had been one of cloudless sunshine, a 

 faint southerly wind and the air full of insect 

 life. 



After waiting until eight o'clock to see the 

 arrival of the inevitable angler at this enviable 

 period of the day and finding to my immense 

 relief that he had been attracted elsewhere, I 

 determined to risk a slippery fall and to get 

 on to the sloping weir itself, take position on 

 the slimy larch trunks, and await the evening 

 rise. With no one watching it was not 

 difficult and I managed to find an insecure seat- 

 hold behind a clump of dock leaves and jetsam 

 in which a dipper's brood had been hatched. 

 Seated there with a background of the sloping 

 weir and dark trees I could reach fully half, 

 and that the deeper half, of the pool into which 



