Below the Deloraine bridge the Meander lives up to its name. The quick shingle river of the stretch above slides under the Bass Highway, takes in Dungiven Rivulet, Quamby Brook and Black Sugarloaf Creek, and settles into forty-five kilometres of long runs and broadwaters between high banks, winding through pasture and poppy country to Strath Bridge, where Selbourne Road crosses and Inland Fisheries Service changes the season. IFS describes it as water that fishes well for every method, and it does; the fly angler’s share of it is the mayfly on the slow water, the hoppers along the farmland in autumn, and a long leader from a high bank to a fish you have found by walking. The fall of the river on this page shows how gentle it is: ninety metres of drop in forty-five kilometres, most of it in the first few below the town. Both of the river’s gauges sit at its ends, the Deloraine bridge at the top with its record since 1954 and Strathbridge at the bottom, whose latest reading is on this page. This is not wading water in the way the stretch above is. It is walking water: find the fish in the backwaters and along the banks, cover it from above, and mind the crops, because IFS means what it says about the poppies. The season closes here for the winter; a hundred metres downstream of the bridge it runs for another month.