48 TROUT FISHING 



been in Devonshire. What more natural than to 

 respond to so obvious an invitation, and to see what 

 a blue upright or Grcenwell's Glory may achieve 

 fished wet downstream? A wrong proceeding, I 

 grant you, yet not without the palliation of difficulty, 

 for the rod must be kept low and the line switched 

 cunningly to avoid the overhanging boughs. And 

 the fly must hang seductively in the eddy behind 

 the ash roots, must move convincingly across the 

 stream, and must be made to tarry here, to hasten 

 there. There is more in the wet-fly business than 

 contemptuous prohibitions would seem to allow, 

 especially in a place like this. And when the 

 tug comes, and a fierce fish is gone away down- 

 stream and round the corner, the angler is prepared, 

 puffing and splashing after, to vow that never did 

 trout hooked on orthodox dry fly make so fast a 

 run or pull so hard. It is surely the not impossible 

 two-pounder at last. 



It is well that two anglers should be on the fishery 

 together, because there is then no difficulty as to 

 which part of the water it were best to visit. For 

 two rods there is an obvious division into an upper 

 beat and a lower. Alone, I sometimes knew fearful 

 indecisions, and if, after much turning of the swift 

 mind this way and that, I went upstream, there 

 would presently come a craving for the lower water. 

 If my feet carried me to the bottom hatch where the 



