120 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



The marking down of good fish and making a mental 

 map of the places where such fish lie is a habit that you 

 should practise until it becomes instinctive. It is valuable 

 on every river, but most useful and essential on small streams. 

 If it is a big water, like the middle or lower Test or some 

 portions of the Itchen, which you are fishing, you may indeed 

 walk up along the bank and look out for rising fish. You will 



CRAWLING UP TO A FISH OUT IN THE RIVER. 



do no great harm and cause alarm only to the fish within 

 twenty yards or so. But if you try this perambulating manner 

 up the banks of some of the small streams of the clear water 

 composition, which we find in all that flow from the chalk, 

 it is hardly likely that you will come within casting range 

 of a rising trout, though you perambulate from cock crow to 

 curfew. What happens in that case is that the fish flee up- 



