FAILURES AND SUCCESSES 



more each time he grasped the rod, so he could not put a suffi- 

 cient strain on to keep the Hne taut, and he would not reel up 

 and quickly recover the line taken out at the first rush. Over 

 and over again the fish succeeded in drowning the line, turning 

 upstream and jumping close to our boat, while the unfortunate 

 angler was still labouring under the delusion that it was still 

 far downstream, the direction in which the upper part of the 

 line continued to cut the water. Not one salmon out of at 

 least half a dozen was landed, and more often than not the cast 

 came back without the fly. All this time I never had so much 

 as a pull ! 



Then there was another day on which I had Burnmouth 

 and Isla mouth all to myself and did nothing, when Henry 

 Graham, who had been fishing the next beat, came back with 

 a big red kipper weighing 46 lb. Since that time I have 

 been among the monsters in the Tweed, not very often, per- 

 haps, but frequently enough to catch an appreciable number 

 of good fish, though never a monster. I have tried Bemer- 

 side and Mertoun as the guest of my friend the late Walter 

 Farquhar ; and Dryburgh and Coldstream, with Sir William 

 Scott and Egremont Lascelles. Clean fish and good fish fell 

 to my rod, but nothing of exceptional size, though I was not, 

 on the other hand, tantalised at any of these places by seeing 

 some more fortunate angler attain the bliss denied to me. 

 Indeed, the most exciting struggle that I saw all the time was 

 when Egremont and I were enjoying a morning's trouting at 

 Coldstream, and he hooked a very large spring fish on a small 

 March Brown when wading in a broad and rapid cast not far 



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