252 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



properly stimulated, and the shallow lake has 

 become a series of empty pans floored with sand 

 and seaweed among which the sea-stream (you 

 might wet your ankles in it) meanders, clear as 

 crystal and still as glass, save when a flounder 

 wallows across it. I am not a surveyor, and I 

 cannot reach any just approximation at any 

 rate, not within a million gallons or so of the 

 amount of water which has to flow out, twice 

 a day, through the sea-gate. But this is a matter 

 of very minor importance, for in flowing out 

 it makes a very pretty, narrow, V-shaped torrent, 

 gliding down to a big, tumbling, foaming pool, 

 where the sea-trout lie, and if Neptune, god of 

 fishes, wills it, go for any standard pattern that 

 you send them. 



My first experience of these sea-trout was very 

 painful. I had been casting all morning in a 

 dead calm on the lake, and I had done badly, 

 very badly. There are few games better worth 

 playing than throwing a dry-fly from a boat over 

 rising fish. But when they are not rising and 

 will not be tempted, it is a most dispiriting form 

 of exercise. At two o'clock, I gave it up and 

 went down to the sea-stream to find it tearing 

 through the sea-gate deep, strong, and foaming. 

 I had never seen it like that before, for hitherto, 

 in my ignorance, I had fished it on the low ebb. 



