EPISODICAL 209 



ends sooner than that of the most patient. So I began, 

 when things got to this pass, to examine the herbage for 

 sedges. Finding one or two about, and, in the course of 

 doing so, bolting two or three trout from under the bank, 

 I knotted on my favourite Landrail and Hare's-ear Sedge 

 dressed on a No. 1 hook, and proceeded to beat slowly 

 up my own bank. How slowly I proceeded may be 

 judged by the fact that it took me three hours to work 

 up six hundred yards of bank, dropping my fly into every 

 likely corner, over the edges of cut weeds collected along 

 the bank, in quiet bays between tussocks, in little clear 

 spaces between weeds, and wherever there was a little 

 fast run of water against any excrescence on the bank. 

 It was not long before the first trout took hold, making a 

 ring so small and delicate as to be scarcely noticeable, 

 but it was enough, and he found his way to the net and 

 to the basket. Then came a grayling of a pound and a half, 

 lying a little farther out. Then a second a little smaller. 

 Then a run of bad luck due to some bad points, trout 

 after trout hooked and lost, sometimes breaking in the 

 strike, sometimes later in playing, a thing which had not 

 happened to me for many a year. But by degrees, 

 picking up here a trout and there a trout, the bag worked 

 its way by 3.30 to the comfortable total of four brace, 

 including the brace of grayling. And all the while not 

 a dun or sedge showed on the water. The strap of the 

 bag began to cut uncomfortably hard into the shoulder, and 

 an adjournment to the lodgings was taken for a siesta 

 and a meal before the evening rise. On the Tuesday 

 evening there had been quite a good evening rise in spite 

 of a rough and cold wind — quite an abnormal experience. 

 On this occasion there was rain as well as wind, but, in 

 order to see if the abnormal occasion would repeat itself, 

 in despite of rain as well as wind, my companion and I sallied 



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