LATE OCTOBER GRAYLING FISHING. 247 



for it. The bank was high, the current deep 

 and strong, so I still walked on. Had he been 

 fairly taken I should have got him; but I still 

 had the discomforting feeling about his owner- 

 ship. Making a last dip at him with the net, 

 the rim touched the cast and he was off. 

 Never was there such a sense of relief in the 

 atmosphere; although never has a grayling made 

 anything resembling the prolonged fight that he 

 did. Here was a fish of perhaps two pounds 

 and a quarter, free after a run of over six 

 hundred yards from where he was hooked. 



Whenever I think back on it, I inwardly 

 thank goodness that he escaped, for I dare not 

 have returned him to the water after landing 

 him ; as the other angler would have guessed 

 my guilty conscience at putting back such a 

 plucky prize caught fairly on a fly on the first 

 of November. Nothing has made me a firmer 

 believer in the wiles of the wicked one than this 

 bad quarter of an hour's sport. Even the vain 

 curiosity of wanting to measure the length of 

 the cast could never tempt me to make the 

 necessary number of paces into the meadow 

 above that ditch. I prefer to regard it as an 

 infernal record. 



The final wind up after the last day of a 

 grayling season is somewhat sad to a man who 

 has no chance of shooting. Rapidly shortening 

 days, the curtailment of outdoor exercise, and 

 the inevitable four months of winter, make one 

 look forward to the coming spring and its early 



