THE COQUET. 273 



eriox may also be met with in the lower part of the 

 river. 



THE COQUET. 



The above is deservedly esteemed one of the 

 finest trouting-streams in the north of England, being 

 of sufficient breadth to admit of the full sweep of 

 the longest line a single-handed rod can command ; 

 while it abounds in fine streams and still deeps, alter- 

 nating with each other, and runs over a clear gravelly 

 bed, with flat shelving shores, unencumbered with brush- 

 wood or other impediments : just such a river, take it 

 all in all, for trout-fishing, as a veteran angler would 

 make, were he endowed with creative power. In fact, 

 I consider the upper waters of the Coquet, from Windy- 

 haugh (among the Cheviots, where I have known a 

 single rod creel sixteen dozen of trout in one day) to 

 the village of Eothbury, twenty miles below, a magni- 

 ficent a.rena for the angler's operations. In this part of 

 its course among the hills, the most splendid streams are 

 everywhere met with, leaping here and there over pro- 

 jecting ledges of rock, into deep dark pools below, and 

 literally swarming with fair-sized trout, which rise like 

 skip-jacks, in twos and threes together, on a favourable 

 day, at almost every cast ; and to find three lively fin- 

 sters tugging away at each other like newly-coupled 

 puppies, in a boiling eddy, beneath a rocky ledge, is no 

 uncommon occurrence in this anglers paradise ; while 

 for minnow-spinning, the deep, dark, eddying pools are 

 unrivalled. However, I may here remark, that trout do 



