254 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



is checked, the chances are the fish is balked and 

 frightened from the bait. In due course, raising 

 my hand, there was a good fish at the end of the line, 

 and not long after the gardener's boy was staggering 

 proudly home under the weight of a well-shaped 

 twenty -five-pound autumn fish. 



Here is an instance, of which many others could 

 be given several pages of them, in fact, if need be 

 where some fertility of resource made all the difference 

 between a full and an empty bag. 



I have already alluded to Irish rivers. The Shannon 

 I have never fished. But, apart from this grandest 

 of streams, I know no finer or more beautiful river 

 than the Irish Erne. Scotland has its far-famed 

 salmon-rivers, many of which I have fished, and hope 

 to fish again, as well as some of the salmon waters 

 of Norway, if only the Fates be kind. But if a com- 

 parison be not, in this connection, odious, then in 

 some respects the Erne can compare favourably with 

 any river of them all. 



If you would know more of it, then away to 

 the north-west coast of Ireland, where the Atlantic 

 breezes blow straight and fresh from the ocean. 

 There it is that the river Erne, flowing along the 

 boundary-line between counties Donegal and Fer- 

 managh, drains Lough Erne into Ballyshannon Bay. 

 Lough Erne is one of the largest lakes in the Emerald 

 Isle, second only in size to Lough Neagh. From the 

 head of the upper lake, south-east of Enniskillen, 

 down to Belleek, where the salmon-river proper 

 begins, is a distance of something like fifty miles. 

 The main lake, extending north-west from Enniskillen 

 for about thirty miles to within three miles of Belleek, 

 is a lovely piece of water, studded here and there 



