MAY 83 



show near the surface. The kicks went on at intervals, 

 but there was nothing in the nature of a run by this 



sullen creature. What ? The surface was broken, 



not by a fish, but by a coil of barbed wire ! The salmon 

 had run through the coil, leaving the hooks fixed in it, 

 and the ' kicks ' were the result of the wire uncoiling as 

 it was dragged to the surface. 



One more yarn, and a brief one. At the foot of a 

 rocky glen a west country burn brawls over the shingle 

 into the bay. Here there are two or three pools, 

 varying from time to time in breadth and length and 

 depth according as waves and tide shift the shingle. 

 To-day there may be three or four feet of water, ample 

 holding for a fresh-run sea- trout, or for brook trout that 

 often descend below high tide-mark to batten on 

 marine delicacies. Next week, after a gale, the same 

 pool may be filled with many tons of gravel, when the 

 angler, after keeping scrupulously out of sight, and 

 fishing it delicately, finds that he has been whipping a 

 film of water six inches deep. To this pool I descended 

 one bright summer day. with three or four pounds of 

 fat, pink-fleshed little trout in my bag, killed above 

 the fall. Just as the tail-fly swept past a boulder on 

 the far side of the stream pluck ! a fish was fast, and 

 a good one too, judging from the dead pull on the cast. 

 A sea-trout, methought ; yet was there something queer 

 in its behaviour. It neither dived nor plunged, only 

 kept on a strain as heavy as the very fine gut cast 

 would bear. I drew the fish steadily towards the 

 shelving bank, expecting every moment the frenzied 

 rush with which a trout, sea or brook, meets such a 



