FOREST, LAKE, AND RIVER 



is whether trout strike the fly with their tails 

 before they attempt to take it with their mouths. 

 I have seen them take the fly in just that way. 

 The trout would turn over on the top of the 

 water, slap the fly with his tail, and I have in- 

 stantly caught him with the fly in his mouth. I 

 have caught many that way ; and there comes 

 back to my mind's eye and ear a pool below a 

 twelve-foot dam on the Dry Brook in Delaware 

 County, New York, where, late one summer after- 

 noon, I laughed with glee at the constant recurrence 

 of this acrobatic feat on the part of the trout, and 

 at the sound of their tails as they slapped the water. 

 They did not strike the fly into their mouths ; 

 but striking and sending the fly in one direction, 

 the trout would curve his head around from be- 

 neath, in the opposite direction to the tail, almost 

 in a circle, and very like a capital C or G. 



Ordinary trout are not always hungry, and or- 

 dinary trout usually act in a different way every 

 time. Sometimes they play base-ball with the fly 

 with their tails, knocking it into centre field, while 

 they make a home run, and sometimes they are 

 " caught on the fly," as it were, by their tails, or 

 again by their mouths ; and then they '11 bump 

 their noses against the fly, and push it away, or 

 they will take it, and spit it out at you, notwith- 



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