ON ANGLING. 107 



IV. 



WHERE AND HOW TO FISH. 



YOU are a tolerably accomplished fly-fisher by this time 

 if you can execute with some certainty and accuracy the 

 various casts suggested in my former letters. You may 

 now much improve your accuracy of throw by practising 

 your casting at daisies, or croquet hoops or any target 

 you please on the lawn. The finest form of all angling 

 is that of fishing with the dry fly which is pursued 

 chiefly on the rivers that have their sources in the chalk — 

 placid, clear, full of good fish food. Yet there is a 

 special charm of their own in those faster streams where the 

 fly is generally fished and taken in a state of at least semi- 

 submergence. On the dry-fly rivers you seldom trouble to 

 throw for a fish unless you see him rise ; on the wet-fly streams 

 you " chuck and chance it " as the dry-fly purist scornfully 

 says, but you chuck, if you are at all experienced, only 

 where the chance is good ; and the necessary discrimina- 

 tion leads you to a study of the habits of the fish which 

 is full of an interest of its own. The angler of ripe 

 wisdom realises " the places where the fish lie " almost 

 without taking thought on the matter ; and this on 

 rivers which he is visiting for the first time. Of course, on 

 the rivers which are familiar to you and which you have 

 fished again and again the haunt of every fish of note 

 will soon be known. 



Of this problem, as of some others, you may best 

 find a solution satisfactory to yourself by trying to consider 

 it from the fish's point of view. If you were a trout and 

 desirous of feeding on flies that were coming down the 

 water's surface, to what part of the broad stream would 

 you betake yourself ? It would be an insult both to 



