Our gillie
put on for us big bright sea-trout flies--nobody fishes there for yellow
trout; but, in our inexperience, small "brownies" were all we caught.
Probably we were only taken to streams and shallows where we could not
interfere with mature sportsmen. At all events, it was demonstrated to
us that we could actually catch fish with fly, and since then I have
scarcely touched a worm, except as a boy, in burns. In these early days
we had no notion of playing a trout. If there was a bite, we put our
strength into an answering tug, and, if nothing gave way, the trout flew
over our heads, perhaps up into a tree, perhaps over into a branch of the
stream behind us. Quite a large trout will yield to this artless method,
if the rod be sturdy--none of your glued-up cane-affairs. I remember
hooking a trout which, not answering to the first haul, ran right across
the stream and made for a hole in the opposite bank. But the second lift
proved successful and he landed on my side of the water. He had a great
minnow in his throat, and must have been a particularly greedy animal. Of
course, on this system there were many breakages, and the method was
abandoned as we lived into our teens, and began to wade and to understand
something about fly-fishing.
It was worth while to be a boy then in the south of Scotland, and to fish
the waters haunted by old legends, musical with old songs, and renowned
in the sporting essays of Christopher North and Stoddart.
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