EPISODICAL 217 



was too definite. There was a frantic wallow and a huge 

 wave as the frightened fish dashed out between the up- 

 rights into the open. If only the gut had held and the 

 line run free ! 



A sympathetic rain began to fall in a soft drizzle, and 

 turned the angler homewards. Just below the railway 

 bridge he heard a sound like a huge kiss, and where the 

 current swung into a large, slow back eddy he located a 

 nice cruising trout, which was absorbing stray morsels 

 with great enjoyment. It took no time to knot on a 

 Hare's- ear Sedge — as large as could be found in the box — 

 and to drop it, when the cruiser's back was turned, well 

 in his beat among the scum. The first time round the 

 fish did not see it, nor the second, nor the third. The 

 fly began to sink, and finally went under. The fish was 

 too near to let the angler pick out his fly for a fresh cast. 

 Was that a flash of a white belly under the scum ? If not, 

 what is the meaning of the screaming reel and that big 

 trout yonder flinging himself violently out of the water 

 time after time some twenty yards away ? By degrees 

 he was brought back, and the best of gillies netted him 

 out — as perfect a three-pounder as river-side ever saw. 



A LOCAL FALL. 



It had become a disastrous day, even for August. Four 

 of us in the water meadows, with an average of a mile of 

 water apiece in the twin streams, and only one of us had 

 a fish when we went in at five o'clock, and that was a 

 grayling. The day had been still but not hot, but there 

 had been no life in the air and no rise of fly, and scarcely 

 a fish had moved all day. Yet as, on my way in, I crossed 

 a corner of a meadow to reach a plank bridge which 

 straddled the mouth of the big tributary meadow drain 

 that discharges into the Eyrie length, it seemed that the 



28 



