A Visit to Troutbridge 155 



of year are concerned. And yet I do not 

 wonder that, despite the disposition to dash 

 the hopes of young may-fly dreamers, Trout- 

 bridge inns fill up with keen anglers at this 

 season, and the Clear is more severely assailed 

 for ten days or so than during the remainder 

 of the year. As I have tried to show, the 

 attractions offered by the meadows are irre- 

 sistible just now, and then, besides, trout, and 

 very heavy ones too, do display a rare activity 

 when the fly is fairly up. 



Come with me to the aldered banks of the 

 Clear, a quarter of a mile out of the town, 

 and I will try to show you a very little of 

 the stream and sport. When I last visited 

 the Clear it was April. A howling north- 

 east wind one day and a steady downpour 

 the next were enough to take the edge off 

 the pleasure of our first two days' trout fish- 

 ing in 1897 '^^ ^^^^ stream. It is true that 

 trout were rising pretty constantly at certain 

 points where the surface food, duns, midges, 

 and the like, congregated by reason of the 

 wind, and that we started angling at ten 



