n,
one of them a certain twenty pounder, fluttered up at the fly. They
did not mean business though. That pool I fished, with change of
pattern and abundant intervals, until I was not merely fit but ready to
drop, and rose two of the fish a second time. On Thursday the river
was so out of order that I left the salmon rod in its rack in the barn
and drove up to Manflo lake, arriving there in time to see the effects
of an apparently innocent occurrence of thunder and lightning. There
was no storm or overcasting of the heavens, only a single discharge
from one wandering cloud, yet it fired the forests in two places, and
we saw the columns of white smoke of the conflagration. With thunder
all around the hills it did not seem promising for the trout; still we
had driven eight miles to try them, and were there for the purpose, so
we unmoored the boat and began. The trout were small and of two
varieties--a dark, heavily-blotched, lanky fish, with coarse head, and
a shapely golden fellow, thickly studded in every part with small black
spots. I used merely one cast--Zulu, red and teal, March brown with
silver ribbing--and in two hours I had caught forty-one trout weighing
13 lb. In salmon fishing here one catches brown trout every day; your
salmon fly may be large, medium, or small, it is all the same to these
voracious fario, which never appear to be more than half a pound. One
has the consolation always in Norway of knowing that what one catches
need never be wasted. There is something quite touching in the
gratitude which the poor villager evinces in return for a present of
two little trout.

An instance may be mentioned of apparent service to the salmon angler
by the trout which, as a rule, are execrated as an intolerable
nuisance. After you have succeeded in working your fly some thirty
yards below, and can feel it swimming on an even keel at the end of a
straightly-extended line, the supreme moment of expectation has
arrived; to have the situation thus achieved by labour ruined by the
impudence of a trout 9 in. or 10 in. long is warranty, if ever, for
speaking out. My example is of such a nuisance to which I owe a
grilse. At any rate, that is my theory. Two salmon and five grilse
were at that time my total for odd hours of fishing during part of the
week, and I had fished with the Durham Ranger and Butcher (No. 4). One
evening, putting off for another drift down the pool, I bethought me of
a set of his favo