THE FANCIES OF THE TROUT 133 



on or skipping above the surface, at which trout 

 jump or thrust up their noses. For one fly taken 

 in that way, probably scores are taken as they rise 

 from the bottom, where they have passed their 

 larval life, and while on this rise their wings are 

 as yet unexpanded. If, however, the fish takes 

 the immersed artificial fly, seen by it darting 

 through the water some distance below the 

 surface, for any sort of natural fly, it is for this 

 rising fly with the unexpanded wings, on which 

 no fly is modelled. 



Yet nothing is more certain than that fish have 

 fancies for patterns, or something in patterns 

 fancies which vary from day to day, and even 

 from hour to hour, but are absolutely determinative 

 while they last. What that something is it is hard 

 to determine, but it is a something which often 

 remains when the wings of the fly are almost 

 entirely frayed away. And it may be more 

 decisively present in the most crudely dressed fly 

 than in the finest product of the shops, as I have 

 often noted on that dour stream, the Clyde, where 

 the Lanarkshire miners, with home-dressed hooks 

 of the least promising aspect, always get the best 

 baskets. And whatever it is, the unsophisticated 

 trout of the remote lochs are just as discriminating 

 in picking it out as their relatives anywhere. 



