THE ANGLER'S GREETING. 125 



me, I will show them to you. Let me drop a fly 

 into this hole. Ah ! there he is ! see him dash for it. 

 He won't come again, let us push along. 



Push along, you say ? do you expect I am coming 

 through that brush ? Not much ; I am not a crank. 

 If you are so fond of trying to break your neck for a 

 string of trout, why go. I go ! am quite willing to 

 be alone on this lovely little creek, for it contains some 

 of the handsomest trout it has ever been my good luck 

 to kill. Here and there I drop in a fly ; sometimes a 

 " Yellow May," sometimes a " Professor," sometimes a 

 " Stone-fly" ; once in a while an "Ibis" is fancied by 

 some fastidious trout. Now and then a "Floating 

 May-fly " seems a favorite. Where the brush overhangs 

 and is a darksome, lonely spot, I drop in a " Eoyal 

 Coachman," and out comes a big trout lusty and fight- 

 ing ; sometimes fancy flies are spurned and hackles of 

 all colors kill ; then a fly composed of alternate feath- 

 ers, red and white, of no name, but a favorite with 

 the writer, will kill when trout will not take any other 



I am enjoying the fun, and the creel is getting 

 heavy. Half a mile of fishing and twenty-five hand- 

 some trout is doing good enough for mid-day fishing. 



As the evening falls I take my split bamboo and the 

 fly-book, pull on the wading boots, and go down to the 

 mouth of the creek, wading out until I am as far as the 

 sand runs. I cast out more for practice than to expect 

 trout. I have on a big bass-fly large enough for a sal- 



