18 CASTING AS A BEGINNER. 



every other angler passed by with a reminis- 

 cence of flies and entire casts caught up on 

 horrible spiky branches overhanging the deeper 

 water. 



I stayed by the bridge for a long time 

 thinking of the fish that had been lost under 

 the red roots of those bushes, waiting both for 

 the sun to set behind the high ground to the 

 westward, and also to see if the last train 

 brought any other angler. A friend came who 

 had formed one in a small fisherman's knot at 

 the Club that morning when I had described 

 my catalogue of failure to which they listened 

 with unappreciated attention. He was going 

 a mile up the water, not even passing the weir 

 pool, so that he would not interfere with me 

 or my plans. At a little before 8 I decided 

 after much vacillation to again climb on to the 

 weir and this time to try the still stretch above 

 it. There is always something very comfort- 

 able in finding oneself able to work from a 

 lower level than the water and before long a 

 promising fish rose close under the red cliff. 



Owing to trailing ivy and upstanding fox- 

 gloves leaving as little space as they could 

 through which to make a cast, it became a 

 matter of creaking and crawling on a slimy 

 edge board to get into a possible position, but 

 the end rewarded the means for he took the 

 blue upright without demur, behaved most 

 sportingly, and was eventually netted after a 

 final splash on the surface a three-quarter 

 pounder. Apparently this disturbed all others, 



