CLEAR WATERS 



I have seen and heard at close quarters in the past few 

 years a great deal of this Border fishing and realise 

 what a world unto itself it is, how large the craft looms 

 in the life of the country, and how different its con- 

 ditions are to the comparatively exclusive atmosphere 

 that pervades the trout streams even of Yorkshire, 

 Wales, and the south-west. 



Now, a trout-fishing club in the south means per- 

 haps a dozen or so well-to-do gentlemen who rent a 

 stretch of river and carefully preserve it, and probably 

 nourish it periodically with fresh stock. A fishing 

 club in Scotland represents a society of anglers, gentle 

 or simple, citizens let us say of Edinburgh, which 

 exists mainly for competitions, terminated not seldom 

 by banquets of, in the old days at any rate, a most con- 

 vivial character ; for no men can dine together more 

 joyously and altogether felicitously than Scotsmen. 

 But as regards the Scottish fishing club, its main raison 

 d'etre, as I have before remarked, is competition and 

 the winning of medals and other trophies, a custom 

 not only alien but positively hateful in principle to 

 the southern trout-fisher. But there it is ' whatever,' 

 and the Scotsman likes it. There are scores of such 

 clubs in the north, and on the day appointed for a 

 competition by any one of them its members take the 

 train, not generally, unless specified, for the same 

 river for perhaps obvious reasons, but a choice is given 

 of any open water. Away they then flit in singles, 

 braces, or trios to various portions of a score of streams 

 which custom has kept free, and that owners, even if 

 they so desired, would probably find difficult to close. 

 There is an old and strong popular tradition in southern 



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