CHAPTER VII 



THE ANGLER 



LONG before I cast my line on Hampshire chalk 

 streams I had practised the art, which belongs to 

 Hampshire before all other places, of taking a trout 

 with a single floating fly. I learnt it largely through 

 watching and fishing with the greatest angler I have 

 ever known, Frederick Pigou. Angling with him 

 on Hertfordshire streams, and often by myself on 

 a Kent stream and the Derbyshire Wye, I came to 

 understand a good deal that is necessary for taking 

 large, shy Hampshire trout. But years before casting 

 an artificial fly, wet or dry, an intense wish to angle 

 for trout in a clear water had hold of me ; and that in 

 itself is training, an early education in angling. It is 

 hard for some of us to remember days when we were 

 not stirred by the spirit of angling. I recall a long 

 drive of thirty or forty miles across the Berkshire 

 downs into Hampshire, and how, breaking the drive at 

 Hungerford for food, my two companions, both elderly 

 men, stopped at a bridge on the Kennet and asked of 

 one another whether the trout could not almost be 

 smelt there. I think I might have dreamt trout that 

 night. The sensation of looking over one of these old 



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