148 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



The first cast of the year ! What fisherman will 

 not understand and sympathise with my feelings ? 

 London, its delights and its worries, only four days 

 off in reality, seemed to belong to another age and 

 another world. In front of me was the pool, and 

 just behind me the great rock almost as high as a 

 house beside which I had so often lunched while 

 resting the cast. I gazed hungrily at the eddy where 

 I hooked and lost the last fish of the season two 

 years before. How delightful was the feeling of the 

 first rush of strong water as I stepped into the river 

 from the shelving bed of shingle, let out my line, 

 and cast my fly into the deep strong stream just 

 below white water breaking over a great submerged 

 rock. 



I waded down to the bottom of the pool without 

 rising a fish, but what did that matter ? The first run 

 of the line through the rings, as one lets it out in 

 successive lengths, the corncrake melody of the reel, 

 the fall of the cast upon the water straight and true, 

 showing that the right hand (not to mention the left) 

 has not forgotten its cunning ; after a twelvemonth's 

 fast all these were delights enough without the breath- 

 less excitement of the sudden tightening of the line, or 

 the impetuous rush of a hooked salmon. I do not 

 include in this catalogue of delights the sight of the 

 rising fish coming at the fly, as in this river it was the 

 rarest possible thing to see a salmon at all before the 

 sudden check and pull notified that you had hooked 

 one. The rise of a trout was more perceptible and 

 obvious, and was usually followed by a desperate short 

 flurry on the surface before the point of the rod could 

 be raised sufficiently upright to bring you upon terms 



