there is always another feeding merrily:

Invenies alium si te hic fastidit.

It is like an excursion into Corot's country, it is rich in memories of
Walton and Cotton: it is a dream of peace, and they bring you your tea by
the riverside. In salmon-fishing, on the Tweed at least, all is
different. The rod, at all events the rod which some one kindly lent me,
is like a weaver's beam. The high heavy wading trousers and boots are
even as the armour of the giant of Gath. You have to plunge waist deep,
or deeper, into roaring torrents, and if the water be at all "drumly" you
have not an idea where your next step may fall. It may be on a hidden
rock, or on a round slippery boulder, or it may be into a deep "pot" or
hole. The inexperienced angler staggers like a drunken man, is
occasionally drowned, and more frequently is ducked. You have to cast
painfully, with steep precipitous banks behind you, all overgrown with
trees, with bracken, with bramble. It is a boy's work to disentangle the
fly from the branches of ash and elm and pine. There is no delicacy, and
there is a great deal of exertion in all this. You do not cast subtilely
over a fish which you know is there, but you swish, swish, all across the
current, with a strong reluctance to lift the line after each venture and
try another. The small of the back aches, and it is literally in the
sweat of your brow that you take your diversion. After all, there are
many blank days, when the salmon will look at no fly, or when you
encounter the Salmo irritans, who rises with every appearance of earnest
good-will, but never touches the hook, or, if he does touch it, runs out
a couple of yards of line, and vanishes for ever. What says the poet?

There's an accommodating fish,
In pool or stream, by rock or pot,
Who rises frequent as you wish,
At "Popham," "Parson," or "Jock Scott,"
Or almost any fly you've got
In all the furred and feathered clans.
You strike, but ah, you strike him not
He is the _Salmo irritans_!

It may be different in Norway or on the lower casts of the Tweed, as at
Floors, or Makerstoun; but higher up the country, in Scott's own country,
at Yair or Ashiesteil, there is often a terrible amount of fruitless work
to be done. And I doubt if, except in throwing a very long line, and
knowing the waters by old experience, there is very much skill in salmon-
fishing. It is all an affair of muscle and patience. The choice of