CLEAR WATERS 



pound. Ullswater has more the qualities of a huge 

 mountain tarn. There are few or no reeds in it, and 

 there is no mud. It is rock-bound and rock-bottomed, 

 and crystal-clear. And yet with all this, for some 

 reason that no one has really fathomed, its trout are 

 rather indifferent risers, that is to say, at civilised 

 hours, for they are very free risers through the summer 

 nights when, from ten on till five or so in the morning, 

 they come close into the shores to feed. It is all 

 open water, and no such stretch of open trouting water 

 in all England is so little fished. That I am quite 

 sure of. Considering its immense size you may fairly 

 say it is scarcely touched. Yet in May, sometimes a 

 little before that, a couple of good rods may on a good 

 day kill thirty to forty sizeable fish. One of the few 

 May days I ever fished it seriously was with a friend 

 now dead, a very keen angler who frequented the lake 

 a good deal. We had about twenty-five, and I was 

 lucky enough to get one over a pound off the mouth 

 of the Aira beck, a rather unusual occurrence. During 

 one June again I paddled about a good deal by myself 

 in and out of the bays on the upper half of the lake, 

 and always picked up a few fish in a desultory way. 

 Three in succession, I remember, one late afternoon 

 weighed two pounds between them, which was the 

 best bit of luck as regards weight in a brief time I ever 

 had there. It is rather interesting though having a 

 whole big lake to yourself, and this is what it practically 

 amounts to. One learns by degrees the places where 

 a fish may be expected, though it isn't from paucity 

 of numbers that one's expectations and gleanings are 

 so modest, nor can one credit an over supply of bottom 

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