152 
WILD NORWAY. 
back-waters, to all appearance, the perfection of trouting 
waters. But even on these promising bits there came 
no response to the oft-changed fly, and after fishing 
“ clean ” for three miles down, I turned aside to follow 
a tributary that wound its devious way through thickets 
of pine and hazel-scrub. The lower reaches were broad 
and shallow, rippling over a gravel-bed, and there, as 
usual, the trout rose greedily at any small fly, but 
proved poor little things. From some deeper pools 
above, despite heart-breaking boughs interlaced over¬ 
head, we extracted sundry half-pounders and one really 
nice trout. Then, round a deep-wooded bend, we came 
face to face with a rock-glacis, over whose smooth, grey 
surface our stream came trickling down in driblets—a 
mere film of water spread out over hundreds of feet in 
width. We climbed the slope that flanked the obstacle ; 
but above it not a sign of a stream was there. Down 
the steep and stony fjeld a hundred tiny rills came 
splashing and tumbling from the snows far above. 
Whimbrels whistled in tremulous key, and a buzzard 
soared beyond ; but that was all. 
Returning homewards by the river, a native angler 
was plying his craft most effectively in the very back¬ 
waters where, in the morning, I had failed. It was 
slightly humiliating, but the Norsk method was in¬ 
structive. His rod a rough ash-sapling, bark and all, 
without reel or rings, and with tackle of the rudest; yet 
the trout were taking his carelessly-adjusted worm as 
greedily as whitings on a summer night at sea. Instantly 
a fish was felt, and, without regard to size or weight, he 
was jerked out—pitched overhead on to the rocks above, 
or among the branches of a pine. In the half-hour 
