256 ' TROUT FISHING 



great for any exertion, when the trout are dormant 

 and even the little silvery grayling are too exhausted 

 to splash about on the shallows in their peculiar 

 and rather annoying manner. The big hatch-hole, 

 where the great trout may usually be seen cruising, 

 is a horrid sight, a vast bed of weeds going round and 

 round like the dappled horses at a fair. Even the 

 abstract interest of speculating why weeds can 

 revolve for ever on an eddy without being swept 

 into the main current, and so carried away down- 

 stream, yields at length to indignation that such 

 things should be, to amazement that perfect chalk 

 stream fisheries should have the almost inevitable 

 drawback of other people's weeds whenever one is 

 privileged to visit them. 



Lunch is eaten in melancholy, and the conviction 

 of an impending blank grows more profound. Not 

 a dun has been seen all the morning. Yesterday, 

 in like weather, not a dun, or hardly a dun, was seen 

 from morn till eve; the prospects of a rise of fish 

 are remote, especially as each evening the sky is 

 overcast with heavy masses of cloud, masses which 

 threaten thunder, yet do not perform, masses which 

 make the light bad and the fishing hopeless. The 

 effect of meditation on a bad day is not conducive 

 to energy, but all is not yet lost. The other side of 

 the river, perhaps, might disclose a fish smutting 

 close to the bank. A path runs across the sluice- 



