The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-03
THE COLoNEL's TROUT.
A Story of a Winsome Brook and a
 Two-Pounder.

| A story or a W1nSOme Bfook ana a
 Founder.
 A winsome trout stream, sometimes
 coyly hiding its face altogether. delvine
 down deeply between steep bush-over-
 hung banks, now flirting boldly with tbs | messy powders in open sun-lit spaces
 anon taking bold leap into the arms
 of some eager whirling pool, then
 spreading out seriously over a wide
 shallow with every seeming appear
 ance of one to whom the perpetration
 of such wild gambols would be impos- s!ble
 There are trout in the deep runs be- tween those shadowing banks, there are trout in every little eddy behind the stones, there are trout in the swirling pools, and lastly, over this broad gray ely shadow, are still more trout. Crawling do not know this stream, neither do rainbows. It is the home of the good old English brown trout, and | long may it remain so.
 Just where that aspen leaf, brought | to its downfall by last nights first au | tumnal frost, is floating on the water, the dear old white-headed Colonel caught his two-pounder fish which was the stock subject of conversation for miles around for weeks after, and is even spoken of with bated breath as a trout worthy of reverence, and in- deed one to marvel over.
 Things are only great or small by comparison, and in this country, on the edge of the moorland, trout are plentiful rather than large. Perhaps, once in two years. a pounder is caught. One of double that weight is only heard of in a generation, if so often.
 Truth to tell the colonel was using gut very nearly twice as stout as that used on the Itchen or Test for much larger fish, but, for all that, men, and women, too, praised his marvellous skill, and more was thought and heard of the feat than of the Victoria Cross he won years ago in wild Northern India. Such is fame.
 How often have I heard the dear old colonel tell the story (with variations as time went on) of his famous capture. Tt was glorious wind-up to a splen- did season." he would usually com mence. q had taken my rod down from the rack behind the summer house; there was a blue upright for tail fly, the first droper was a cochy- bondhu, and the top dropper a rusty red hackle that little Vickery, the cob bier, tied for me. By gad! what capi- tai hand that fellow was at a trout fly
 '"The weather had been dry all through the first fortnight of Septem- ber the grass looking as brown as if it were August. The grass had been falling for day or two, and then we had such downpour for two whole days and nights that made us wish we might never see raindrop again.
 "The third day the stream was wild | torrent, but you know how soon it runs l down, and on the Saturday, which was | the day after the flood, and 1t was a | high flood, too for it carried away Mrs. | nanny goat, Itook my rod | down from it's rack, as I have told you, and went to take last cast or two just | as a. wind-up to the season, and more l particularly to get the vicars wife brace of trout My boy, I never had | such a day, the whole river seemed alive with fish. Wherever I cast I had rises, and very soon began returning the small ones seeing what sort of a day [ was in for.
 Before noon I could have filled my ,reel twice over, and when I went in to lunch it was with aching back and arms md I felt I had done enough for glory. In the afternoon the clouds broke, the sun came out, and it seemed such |