THE LANDING-NET 113 



before the angler is level with him. Then again 

 a threat of the net turns him, and he makes a 

 dash for a weed-bed some ten yards or so above. 

 From this he has to be turned down, and his 

 downward rush stopped with the net as before. 

 From this point the fight resolves itself into a series 

 of downstream rushes, alternating with much 

 briefer trips upstream, terminated by the necessity 

 in each case for pulling the trout down out of the 

 weed-bed he is bolting for. At last, at the very 

 bottom of the straight, on the edge of the dyke, 

 the fish, not yet half beaten, has to be dragged 

 willy-nilly into the landing-net, or else he must 

 escape down the dyke which streams away on the 

 far side. 



Finally, and in conclusion, one more example. 

 The locus in quo is a piece of fast water some eight 

 or ten yards long, a sort of tumbling-bay, from 

 which the water escapes at racing pace through a 

 culvert twelve or fourteen feet long, which passes 

 under a farm road, thence along some two hundred 

 yards of narrow weedy carrier to an irrigation hatch. 

 In the tumbling-bay are three or four fine fish, one 

 of them something over two pounds. All are feeding 

 on something under water, probably nymphs. A 

 dry fly would drag at once. A double-hooked 

 Green well's Glory, as used on North-Country rivers, 

 might do the trick. But the hooked fish will to a 

 certainty bolt down the culvert, and then it will be 

 a case of smash at once, or weeding with a long 



15 



