74 TWEED. 



battle of thirty-five to fifty minutes, I got a clean 

 fish of 19 Ibs., and found my fore finger cut to 

 the bone with the run of the line. 



There are times, while fishing, either for 

 salmon or trout, in which you will observe, that 

 although there are plenty of fish in the river, 

 you strive in vain, by changes of fly, to take them. 

 They will even come up and flap the fly with 

 their tail, and keep floundering about you in 

 all directions. This is a sure sign of a change of 

 weather or of a flood coming. From long obser- 

 vation, there is not, I may say, a better 

 weather glass ; and, if you are wise, you will give 

 it up and betake yourselves to your books or 

 something else ; for the wielding of a rod, some 

 eighteen-and-a-half feet long all day, is no joke. 

 If they take that day at all, it will just be when 

 the sun dips below the horizon. I have seen a 

 pool fished over and over again, without suc- 

 cess ; but a knowing one behind, on the bank 

 looking on, watched our leaving it, and before we 

 had got a quarter of a mile nearer to our dinner, 

 we could see, making a movement like old Lot's 

 wife, by the bend of the rod and the steady walk 

 by the margin of the pool, true indications of a 

 good fish being already on the line. 



