Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Asoleb's Friends And Enemies. The angler, by keeping his eyes wide open at the riverside, may frequently obtain valuable information from the movements of the animals and birds making their homes by the water. For instance, the flight of a heron, water-hen, or mallard will often denote the presence of other anglers at adjacent pools, and when everyone is fishing "jealous" such information may be valuable and occasion a change of tactics. Again, an inspection of the banks may discover footprints, and by their impression the angler can frequently determine when the pool was last fished and in which direction the fisherman departed. Care should be taken not to leave any kit within reach of cattle, as they are very curious about any uncommon object, and will push it about until by chance it falls into the river. This once happened to a friend of ours with whom we were fishing, and upon returning for his bag he could not find it anywhere, so came tothe unsatisfactory conclusion that either it had been stolen or the cattle had pushed it into the water: the former seemed unlikely, but still the more probable explanation ; however, nearly six months after his fly- book was returned to him by some fishermen who had caught it while fishing with dredge-nets in the estuary 15 miles lower down; his name was just legible, but the book was worthless, and the flies it contained ruined, still the mystery was cleared up. When otters are known to exist in a river, the angler should be careful to put any fish he has killed out of their reach, for, as we know to our cost, they are capable of making off with a fresh-killed salmon in broad daylight—the tracks of the animal in the sand left no room for doubt in the instance we quote; likewise pigs will worry and devour salmo... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.