190 A BUNGLE AND A DILEMMA 



the free end, slipping quickly through the rings, fell 

 in the water. To fling down the rod and catch the 

 sinking line was the act of a moment. The fish, relieved 

 from the strain, ceased running. Here is where I went 

 wrong. Since that far-off day, I have hand-lined many 

 a big kelt, and it was only lack of experience that 

 caused me to tell my gillie to run fresh line through 

 the rings, which I then knotted to the broken part in 

 my hand. This caused a pretty predicament. When I 

 resumed the rod, the knot prevented me from reeling 

 in, and, of course, I had little control over a powerful 

 fish at the end of 40 to 50 yards of line. I spent a 

 couple of hours the best part of a fine afternoon 

 foozling with that salmon ; it was getting dusk before 

 it swam obligingly into the shallows on the hither side, 

 and allowed itself to be scooped out a good fish of 

 26 Ib. It so happens that this was the heaviest salmon 

 I ever killed in North Tyne, but the whole affair was a 

 bungle from find to finish. I console myself with an 

 aphorism by some sententious Frenchman was it 

 Rochefoucauld ? ' Celui qui n'a jamais eu ses moments 

 de folie est moins sage qu'il ne le pense.' 



And now, having made a clean breast of my foozle, 

 let me recount another episode in the same part of that 

 fine river. When first I visited it more than half a 

 century ago there lived in a comfortable lodge just at 

 the junction of the North Tyne and the Reed, a retired 

 Indian doctor who has long since joined Hippocrates 

 in the fields of Asphodel. He was a great and success- 

 ful fisher ; when I made his acquaintance in September 

 he had already accounted for one hundred and forty- 



