88 TROUT FISHING 



It ends with me standing on the qui vive a hundred 

 yards higher up. I am, if you do me the honour to 

 observe me, changing the blue upright for a Tup's 

 indispensable. 



Now, at last, somewhere between half-past seven 

 and eight, begins the fifth period. A rise, two 

 rises, three rises, and there are flies of some sort, 

 transparent things, dancing in the air. So I change 

 the Tup for a blue-winged olive (which every one 

 knows to be the evening fly for July), and proceed 

 laboriously to put the fish down with it. I do not 

 realise that I am doing so, of course. A series of 

 mischances is attributed to unskilful casting, shyness 

 of the fish, to anything you like. Presently the 

 blue upright is given a trial, and it gains two or three 

 short rises. The hackle red quill is of no effect. 

 In a flash then comes the realisation that the sherry 

 spinner is, of course, the thing. It goes on, and has 

 not the slightest result. Then I remember that 

 those transparent things in the air were spinners. 

 The flat-winged imitation ought to have been tried 

 three-quarters of an hour ago, not now, when the 

 spinner is all over. 



So now we enter upon the sixth period, when the 

 fish are really rising and the light is growing less. 

 What are they rising at? The blue-winged olive. 

 Am I keeping quite calm? No, I am putting on a 

 sedge, and a black smut, and a red olive spinner, and 



