330 THE MOOR AND THE LOCH. 



it was getting late, I proposed we should try the centre fish, 

 reserving the low one for the next morning. " To lose the 

 chance of the large fish ! rather lose half-a-dozen dinners." So 

 off he trotted, leaving the smaller one to me. At the first cast 

 I made, he plunged freely out of the water ; but although I 

 wasted near an hour trying every fly I possessed, and resting 

 him between, he never moved a second time. When nearly 

 dark, and dinner over, the Cantab arrived with a clean fish of 

 twenty-one pounds. He had again started the morning salmon, 

 at intervals, three times, and quite disgusted him ; fly after fly 

 had been wound over him in vain. My son had actually wound 

 up his line, and with rod on shoulder, walked a few paces on 

 his road home. All on a sudden he remembered having in 

 his box one untried fly, which we had both proved thoroughly 

 useless on our river. At the first free sweep of the before 

 and since neglected lure, this large cautious salmon rose keenly, 

 fastened firmly, and after an exciting run of three-quarters of 

 an hour, was safely brought to land. 



And here I would caution all good fishers never to brag of 

 hooking " the largest fish they ever had on," unless they bring 

 him home. They may safely leave that boast to the unsuc- 

 cessful, who are really apt to fancy every salmon they lose a 

 monster. I was much amused one morning to hear that a 

 sedulous brother of the rod had hooked a tremendous salmon 

 the evening before, and lost him after some hours' play. The 

 story was simply this : A short time before dusk he fixed his 

 fish, which creeped down to a heavy pool below, and sulked. 

 No doubt it succeeded in rubbing the hook out of its jaw into 

 a sunk root or tree. The careful angler remained with his rod 

 on full bend, till some of his anxious family found him near 

 midnight in this interesting position : he then broke, not his 

 fish, but his fast, which he ought to have done hours before. 



The constant floating of trees is a serious objection to angling 

 on the Dee ; not so much from the rafts coming over the pools, 

 as the constant scraping of the setting poles on the bottom, and 



