CLEAR WATERS 



The Avon is no brook, nor again is it a broad river, 

 but of precisely the right dimensions in my opinion 

 for a first-rate trouting stream. I prefer it, as I have 

 said, in May and through half of June, and do not 

 mind dry weather, sunshine, and thinner water in 

 the least. Nor, I am sure, do the Avon trout. They 

 are then, in my experience, almost always ready to 

 rise, and the good ones too, if you can circumvent 

 them. 



Looking down from the high bank at such periods 

 when the voice of the stream is fluting in its highest 

 key, and the stickles are running low, and the top 

 waves of the pools have subsided into mere tremulous 

 eddies, it looks, I admit, pretty hopeless. You can 

 see the fish travelling affrighted up the gravelly runs 

 into the deeper waters, among them that old pounder 

 marked down of yore, followed by a score of halves, 

 thirds, and quarters. You will not, however, be on 

 the bank when you are fishing, but down in the water 

 creeping warily up beside its alder fringes, and getting 

 here and there some fine vantage-points behind an 

 out-thrusting bush. No scurry of fish will be thus 

 provoked, thin and clear though the stream be, if you 

 are careful. A short line is not usually much good. 

 This is a convention much too freely associated in 

 print with up-stream fishing and a short rod. Well 

 enough in high water or in early spring ; but a longish 

 line must be thrown somehow between or under the 

 trees, and it comes easy enough with habit and practice. 

 ' Fine and far off ' is just as true of this woodland 

 fishing as of a chalk stream, but with a great difference, 

 for in the latter you have probably a twenty-acre 

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