THE WELSH DEE 



early in the season, that is to say. Save those of 

 the lower Usk, which are even more so, I know no other 

 river-trout in this respect so curious. Innocent wights, 

 from Liverpool or elsewhere, come along in June, to 

 say nothing of the next two months, and finding a 

 glorious-looking river just fining down perhaps from 

 a flood, take out a ticket, and, unless the look of the 

 wading scares them, labour diligently and full of hope. 

 But they never catch anything to speak of, not with 

 a fly at any rate, and comparing notes with other 

 innocents perhaps upon the bank, or with others in the 

 outside world, they decide that the Dee is no good, 

 or that there are no trout. They have never seen a 

 rise of March brown on the sacred stream, nor yet 

 those baskets, sometimes hovering on twenty pounds 

 weight, that in early April are lifted out of the coracle 

 in the evening at the horse-shoe weir by Llantisilio. 



The basket, to be sure, may be proportionately 

 light, for Dee trout are tricky, but not often does 

 such misfortune fall to the coracle fisher of reasonable 

 skill under reasonable conditions. For it should be 

 explained that there are two methods of adventuring 

 these Glyndyfrdwy waters. You may wade them or 

 fish them dry-shod from a coracle as it bears you 

 swiftly or slowly, according to the river's momentary 

 humours, over the surface. The former is the more 

 usual method, for the excellent reason that only one, 

 or at the most two coracles with their skippers are 

 available, according to the rules of the Association 

 which controls these waters. And furthermore, when 

 the river is low, which in a dry spring is of course the 

 case, coracling is tiresome if not actually impossible. 

 D 49 



