FAILURES AND SUCCESSES 



pool, waded in as far as a well-known boulder that marks the 

 head of it, and began to cast with every hope of success, for the 

 water looked in perfect condition. Almost immediately some- 

 thing took me deep under water, and the line began to run 

 out very deliberately with a strong, even, strain straight down 

 the middle of the river and without the slighest check or inter- 

 mission. It was not the swift, impetuous rush of a grilse or 

 sea trout, but the even, deliberate progress of something 

 much larger, and I felt thankful that I had nearly two hundred 

 yards of strong backing behind the reel line. As my fish got 

 farther and farther away, I was all the time edging cautiously 

 towards the bank, where I could have followed it more quickly. 

 Alas ! there was no need. When the salmon had got a little 

 more than a hundred yards away, the line, without any in- 

 creased strain or sudden jerk, parted, the rod straightened, 

 and I was left helpless, minus fish, reel line, cast, fly, and some 

 seventy yards of backing. Depressed and conscience-stricken, 

 I seated myself beside the pool and, doing what I ought 

 to have done before starting to fish, tested the remnant of 

 damaged silk, which snapped like packthread at every pull. 

 What probably happened was that the boatmen whose 

 duty it was to wind the used line on the drier, had con- 

 fined their attentions to the first hundred yards, so that the 

 remainder, wound damp on the-^reel, had gone all to pieces 

 when put away at the end of the season. There was nothing 

 to be done but to recognise that I had paid the price of my 

 carelessness, to shoulder my useless rod and bloodless gaff, 

 and to tramp wearily home in my waders. As I crossed the 



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