TODAL AND LILLEDAL 169 



Small as the river is, it holds a fair number of large 

 salmon, which run up to a weight of thirty pounds. 

 Mrs. Lort Phillips succeeded in landing one of twenty- 

 six pounds on her little ten-foot Hardy trout-rod, after 

 an Homeric struggle lasting over two hours. On both 

 occasions of my visits to Todal I was, as usual, unfortu- 

 nate with the monsters. Two at least I hooked, but 

 both escaped ; the one through my own carelessness 

 in neglecting to overhaul my tackle before use, the 

 second through the latent defect of the hook upon 

 which my flies had been tied. A giant took my fly 

 at the head of Long Pool, and when he was boring 

 steadily down stream, after a rush which took out 

 more than a hundred yards of line and backing, 

 snapped the rotten hemp as easily as Samson broke 

 his bonds. It was an awful moment ! I sat cheerless 

 and forlorn, snapping the remaining backing with so 

 slight a strain as to prove its utter worthlessness ; but 

 if my example saves one brother angler from using a 

 reel which has been put away for the winter without 

 thoroughly testing every inch of line, I shall not 

 have suffered in vain. Perhaps the fish was not so 

 enormous as my regretful meditations paint him, but 

 that long steady heavy boring rush down stream was 

 not the effort of a dwarf or weakling. I never saw 

 him, but the twenty-pounder I lost in Lax Stone Pool, 

 the narrow rocky pool just below the point where the 

 river leaves the road above the bridge, showed himself 

 often enough. He was coming to the gaff, beaten and 

 wearied out, when the hold gave way, and the ex- 

 amination alas! not "post-mortem" revealed that 

 both the double hooks which had been well imbedded 

 in his upper jaw had yielded to the strain, and com- 



