68 MINOR TACTICS OF THE CHALK STREAM 



thing exceptional either in lure or in method of 

 attack, or both. 



Followeth the example of 



The Undoing of Aunt Sally. 



She was called Aunt Sally because everyone 

 felt bound to have a shy at her. Her coign of 

 vantage was near the bottom of the water, where 

 the fishery begins, and her irritating " pip, pip," 

 as she took fly after fly in the culvert that was her 

 home was too much for the nerves of nine anglers 

 out of ten, so that the absurdest efforts to circum- 

 vent her were made daily — efforts to float a dry 

 upwinged dun down the culvert from the top : 

 result, immediate and irremediable drag ; efforts 

 to flick a fly upstream to her in the culvert from 

 below : result, broken rod-tops, barbless hooks, 

 flies flicked off against the brickwork, and other 

 disasters, leading to profanity. 



The locus in quo was a stream in the South of 

 England, flowing some fifteen yards or so wide at 

 a good even pace, with a nice purl on it, down to 

 and past a deep hole used for bathing by the 

 farmers' lads. From this hole, a culvert in the 

 left bank, a yard wide and, say, four yards long, 

 diverts a considerable body of the stream into a 

 new channel, to drive a mill in the town below. 

 This was the fastness in which Aunt Sally had 

 taken up her abode, and throughout the spring 

 and summer had defied all efforts to dislodge her. 



