216 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



into the shelter of the lilies, and for more than a minute 

 his struggling tail stood upright out of the water, the mark 

 for frantic efforts on the part of the gillie. A little higher 

 up another pounder came to net, and then the angler, 

 standing among bushes and under a railway bridge, flicked 

 a Crosbie Alder upstream to a cruising fish, and got a 

 bouncer of about two and a quarter pounds. 



Another fish of one and a half pounds followed at the 

 next bend, and then the angler came to a spot where he 

 wished to put in practice one of his pet and frequently 

 successful devices. A willow-tree had fallen into the 

 water. The bank above it had been wattled, but was 

 eroded by the current, and the wattling had been torn 

 away, leaving the uprights only in the river-bed, two feet 

 from the side, and standing three or four inches out of 

 the water. Against one of these had accumulated a mass 

 of thorn and bramble. Above and at the side were dense 

 weed-beds, flushing the surface except for a narrow channel, 

 and on the bank a big thorn-bush, whose boughs dropped 

 to the water and trailed with bramble and other debris. 

 Between the bank and the upright, on which the thorn 

 and bramble had lodged, lay a big trout — three pounds 

 was not an unfair estimate of his weight — and it was the 

 angler's design to get him out of this impossible holt — not 

 by force, but by guile — by hooking him and letting him 

 run free and imagine himself lightly hooked, so that he 

 might rush out into the open and try to kick himself free 

 upon the surface. 



Alas ! it was not to be. The borrowed rod, whatever 

 its virtues, was not delicate in the strike, and perhaps a 

 tired wrist was not well designed to mitigate its hardness. 

 Nothing could have been nicer than the way the fly dropped 

 above the trout. For a moment it drifted slowly, then 

 a huge neb came up and annexed it. Alas ! the response 



