Body Covering 41 



of the fish you see is feeding, and of those that are feeding, 

 only about one in six will look at your fly, and of those that 

 rise only one in six will actually take it, and of those that 

 take it, so small are the flies and so slender the leaders that 

 must be used in this transparent water, only about one in 

 six reach the net. 



The bottom is generally sandy, and most of the fish are a 

 sandy color to match it, but a few are dark and stand out 

 conspicuously against the background. Naturally they are the 

 easiest ones to see, and on the first day they were the ones 

 which attracted my attention. I must have cast over three of 

 four of them without getting a sign of a rise, when the keeper 

 came along. He watched me for a minute in silence. Then 

 he touched my arm. "See that pale one over there?" He 

 pointed to a two-pounder, just the color of the bottom, near 

 the far shore, which I had not noticed. "Give him a try. 

 You'll have a better chance with him. This black fellow will 

 never rise for you. He's blind." 



In streams like the Test, where the fresh-water shrimp 

 and other forms of food are immensely abundant, the blind 

 trout can keep himself well fed by the use of his other 

 senses; but he cannot match the bottom. 



Contrasting with this confident self-exposure in which the 

 Test trout felt free to indulge was the shyness of the fish 

 in a certain small high-Sierra stream which I had a chance to 

 watch one summer. Inhabitants of other waters in that region 

 are far from wary, but this particular stretch of stream ran 

 beside a major trail. Into it, from a near-by lake, a great 

 number of trout had crowded during the spawning season. 

 At the end of the season, and before all the spawners had 

 returned to the lake, the stream was barred in two places for 

 experimental reasons. I knew, or thought I knew, that three 

 fish had been penned in between the barriers. Two of these 

 I caught with hook and line and replaced in the lake, but 



