NOVEMBER 275 



those placid autumn days which sometimes follow each 

 other in long procession the angler's despair though 

 the salmon roll and splash as freely as under a weeping 

 sky, you shall not delude one of them to seize the 

 lure. Not at least till sundown and then, perchance, 

 in the 'fool's half-hour/ you may get a heavy pull 

 at a small White-wing or Silver-grey, and so save a 

 blank. 



But, given a steady wind and a good grey cloud, the 

 lot which sends you to one of the ' dubs ' is not one to be 

 despised. Very likely there lies a hard day's work 

 before you. If you value peace, you will quench any 

 partiality you may entertain for certain flies. Tweed 

 boatmen are terribly autocratic, and it is best to avoid 

 friction by showing ready acquiescence in the dogma 

 which prescribes a Wilkinson because there is frost in 

 her (i.e. the river), or a Ranger because there is a 

 whiteness in her, or a Green well because there is 'a 

 kind o' a blackness ' in her. Put on whatever you are 

 told to use and learn to fling your line right athwart 

 the channel, allowing it to swing slowly round with the 

 current as the boat is paddled slowly up-stream, with 

 the rod low and at right angles to the boat. Dub- 

 fishing is an art of itself; the fish lie deep and rise 

 slow ; do not work the fly in the lively way you have 

 learned is attractive in shallower waters ; to do so is not 

 only to lessen the chances of success, but a waste of 

 strength. Energy, indeed, should be husbanded in 

 dub-fishing, for it may fall to any one's lot to rival the 

 great day of the late Mr. Liddell, sometime vicar of 



