CLEAR WATERS 



natives were mainly worming, so I could not make 

 comparisons. But I had a day in the Glen, which in 

 the lower part where I fished it is of similar quality to 

 the main stream, and I killed thirty-four fish weighing 

 sixteen pounds, and gave up before I had finished either 

 the day or the water, for the simple reason that I 

 couldn't carry any more. This was some years ago. 

 During this past summer a friend of mine and excellent 

 fisherman went to Wooler, where, by the way, there is 

 now a capital hotel. His experience of the Till was 

 precisely mine. He, too, had a day in the Glen and 

 basketed seventy. They did not run so large as mine, 

 being earlier in the season, but included a good many 

 trout and a sea trout or two. 



Where grayling are not indigenous, they prove but 

 a doubtful blessing to a trout stream in which they 

 thrive. They have ruined a large part of the Till, 

 and except to the worm fisher provided a very poor 

 substitute as risers. They have gone far to ruin the 

 Glen, so far as they have succeeded in ascending it. 

 And the Glen was one of the very finest trout streams 

 on the whole Border. That well-known Border fisher- 

 man, the late Mr. Henderson, author of My Life as an 

 Angler, gave it, all things considered, the place of 

 honour among Northumbrian streams. If the grayling 

 furnish but indifferent baskets to the fly fisherman on 

 the Till, they provide the devotee of the * running 

 worm and tooth-pick float ' abundant sport. This 

 is a Yorkshire practice, and is something of an art in 

 itself. I have watched its professors at work, and 

 with much interest. The water selected is a running 

 gravelly stream, such as the Till abounds in, the hook 



3H 



