Angling Sketches | Page 8

behind this stone, one of my brothers one day caught three
trout weighing over seven pounds, a feat which nowadays sounds quite
incredible. As soon as the desirable eddy was empty, another trout, a
trifle smaller than the former, seems to have occupied it. The next mile
and a half, from Lindean to the junction with Tweed, was remarkable
for excellent sport. In the last pool of Ettrick, the water flowed by a
steep bank, and, if you cast almost on to the further side, you were
perfectly safe to get fish, even when the river was very low. The flies
used, three on a cast, were small and dusky, hare's ear and woodcock
wing, black palmers, or, as Stoddart sings,
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 but to lower the top almost to the
water's edge, and hold on in hope. Presently the boat drifted ashore, and
I landed him--better luck than I deserved. People who only know the
trout of the Test and other chalk streams, cannot imagine how much
stronger are the fish of the swift Scottish streams and dark Scottish
lochs. They're worse fed, but they are infinitely more powerful and
active; it is all the difference between an alderman and a clansman.

Tweed, at this time, was full of trout, but even then they were not easy
to catch. One difficulty lay in the nature of the wading. There is a pool
near Ashiesteil and Gleddis Weil which illustrated this. Here Scott and
Hogg were once upset from a boat while "burning the water"--spearing
salmon by torchlight. Herein, too, as Scott mentions in his Diary, he
once caught two trout at one cast. The pool is long, is paved with small
gravel, and allures you to wade on and on. But the water gradually
deepens as you go forward, and the pool ends in a deep pot under each
bank. Then to recover your ground becomes by no means easy,
especially if the water is heavy. You get half-drowned, or drowned
altogether, before you discover your danger. Many of the pools have
this peculiarity, and in many, one step made rashly lets you into a very
uncomfortable and perilous place. Therefore expeditions to Tweedside
were apt to end in a ducking. It was often hard to reach the water where
trout were rising, and the rise was always capricious. There might not
be a stir on the water for hours, and suddenly it would be all boiling
with heads and tails for twenty minutes, after which nothing was to be
done. To miss "the take" was to waste the day, at least in fly-fishing.
From a high wooded bank I have seen the trout feeding, and they have
almost ceased to feed before I reached the waterside. Still worse was it
to be allured into water over the tops of your waders, early in the day,
and then to find that the rise was over, and there was nothing for it but
a weary walk home, the basket laden only with damp boots. Still, the
trout were undeniably THERE, and that was a great encouragement.
They are there still, but infinitely more cunning than of old. Then, if
they were feeding, they took the artificial fly freely; now it must be
exactly of the right size and shade or they will have none of it. They
come provokingly short, too; just plucking at the hook, and running out
a foot of line or so, then taking their departure. For some reason the
Tweed is more difficult to fish with the dry fly than--the Test,