SEPTEMBER 221 



stretch which is first-class in summer is 

 useless when the floods are out. 



The fish have run into bays, sheltered 

 places which were waterless before the 

 river rose. It is not in every bay, 

 however, that you may expect sport. 

 Some of the bays are the deep and foam- 

 flecked whirlpools which Mr. Ruskin 

 describes in language much too grand to 

 be quoted in these unassthetic pages. In 

 such bays trout are absentees. Trout in 

 a whirlpool would have water going 

 through their gills the wrong way and 

 would be drowned. This is a fact 

 which seems to be generally unknown to 

 instructors in the art of angling. These 

 err in telling us to "fish the eddies." 

 Usually there are trout at the edges of 

 the eddies ; but there is never a trout in 

 an eddy itself. The whirlpools of the 

 Tay are so large that, as a rule, you 

 cannot reach the outer edge, where there 

 may be trout, and usually the swirl 

 reaches to the bank you stand on, near 

 which, therefore, there is none. Bays of 



