A BORDER BOYHOOD 31 



Wee dour looking huiks are the thing, 

 Mouse body and laverock wing. 



Next to Ettrick came Tweed : the former river 

 joins the latter at the bend of a long stretch of 

 water, half stream, half pool, in which angling was 

 always good. In late September there were sea- 

 trout, which, for some reason, rose to the fly much 

 more freely than sea-trout do now in the upper 

 Tweed. I particularly remember hooking one 

 just under the railway bridge. He was a two- 

 pounder, and practised the usual sea-trout tactics 

 of springing into the air like a rocket. There was 

 a knot on my line, of course, and I was obliged to 

 hold him hard. When he had been dragged up 

 on the shingle, the line parted, broken in twain at 

 the knot ; but it had lasted just long enough, during 

 three exciting minutes. This accident of a knot on 

 the line has only once befallen me since, with the 

 strongest loch-trout I ever encountered. It was on 

 Branxholme Loch, where the trout run to a great 

 size, but usually refuse the fly. I was alone in a 

 boat on a windy day ; the trout soon ran out the 

 line to the knot, and then there was nothing for it 



