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284 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN'
I was almost on the point of saying that I had never had the chance of fishing while in the United States. Usually I have been so hard-worked there by Will Morris that I have had no time for angling and many a time I have gazed longingly at the American streams and rivers as we have flashed past them in the train. But I did once have an extraordinary fishing experience at Denver, of all places. Hearing from somebody that I was very fond of fishing, an admirer of mine in the Colorado city, Mr. Cliff Welch, invited me to have "as much fishing as I liked" on the private lake of a friend of his. This gentleman reared trout for sale to the hotels in Denver and did a very fair business. The lake was an artificial affair. It was perhaps a hundred yards long by fifty yards at its broadest point. There were reputed to be five thousand trout in it and they were fed daily with liver and light hash. All these facts I was unaware of before making my descent on the "preserved waters." When I arrived I found the lake frozen over. My disappointment was keen. But it was explained to me that this need not stop my fishing ; one of the proprietor's servants got a big pole and smashed the ice all round the edges. So I started. My only trouble lay in seeing that my line did not foul the jagged ice anywhere and with this in view my "casting" was more like "poking" than the regulation action of a respectable angler. Did I catch any fish ? I didn't catch them — it was pure murder. I had only one fly, a blue and black with a yellow body, but it did more execution than any single fly I have ever known. No sooner did it light on the water than a dozen trout came for it like bull-dogs. In spite of years of handfeeding — more probably because of it — these trout were gluttons for the strange lure offered by my fly. I couldn't unhook them fast enough. In less than an hour I had forty or fifty pounders and poundand-a-halfers lying on the icy bank of the lake. Then my conscience got the better of me. I stopped. It wasn't playing