Where to fish page 2

A friend, who I know will read these lines, wrote me accounts at intervals during a whole season of sport he was enjoying in a place such as 1 allude to. The water consisted of a dam, a mill leet, a small run, and a bathing pool on a river where half pounders were always respected. Week after week he managed to secure two and three brace on lucky evenings ranging as high as thirteen ounces, with a special cuvee of pounders from the pool.

As we were a hundred and fifty miles apart, and both doing well as doctor's bulletins say, the exchange of experiences incurred no risk of either of us trespassing on the other's preserves. This kind of fishing is of course incompatible with the meals of civilisation. One must not only rough it, but be content with simple life and an outdoor existence. But it can be attained every year in nearly every county by those who are keen enough to seek out, and put up with, its conditions. It can be managed by City men on holiday, alone, almost better than by country residents who do not care for the discomfort of sleeping away from their homes, or who might feel a little ashamed of their surroundings.

For ten years now 1 have always been fortunate enough to take a holiday of three weeks in Devonshire or Hants embracing usually the last week of April and the first fortnight of May; waiting in fact for the quiet time which sees the gloriously lengthening days between Easter and Whitsuntide - which sees the arrival and hears the song of the warblers, the black-cap, the willow wrens and the chiffchaff, as they choose their nesting places - which sees the sky changing from ominous black to smiling showers after the east wind has had its innings and the flooded meadows have recovered from the furious rain storms that followed its departure - which brings the cuckoo's welcome call to the angler as he puts up his rod and the green woodpecker's joyous laugh as he loses his first fish.

When all the land is musical, ' the woods like great cathedrals pillared with oaks, and roofed with the sky, from which the birds sing like hidden nuns in the green twilight of the leafy cloisters.'

During this time there, is seldom much gained by being too early. One can go down to the bridge in slippers for an hour before breakfast, without the rod, and make plans for the day according to the wind and one's own inclination, deferring the real start until ten or ten thirty.

I used at one time to be bursting with impatience; to hurry to the best runs and meadows with the idea of getting ahead of other fishermen, the. result being that 1 found my pleasure rather clouded by haste, and my sport by bad casting or careless fishing. Fortunately I have never aspired to being a first rate fly fisherman, have no reputation to keep up, and can be as philosophic as anyone over an empty creel, without abating a jot of keenness or feeling a tinge of ennui.

There is no denying that angling is selfish in all these particulars. To feel that you can deposit your belongings under the hedge near one pool while you move up to fish the other; and can return to the first exactly when you like with no fear of finding it occupied, constitutes a satisfaction that all will understand. The week-end visit from Friday to Tuesday evening is often the exact length of time you care to devote to it. Far nicer to return a day before you want to after good sport than to outstay your own pleasure. As the old German proverb says ' the man who wants to get the last drop in the tankard is very likely to get the lid on his nose.' In that particular a pleasant four days is like a good profit. You must leave the last bit for someone else, or for another time.