110 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



fish has risen is the hall mark of proficiency. 

 Many never attain it : and I fancy none do 

 unless they are bred to it. And nothing is so 

 fatal to its acquisition as a training on a chalk 

 stream. If you have not got it, you must 

 replace it at any price, and fishing downstream 

 is not too high a price to pay. 



Watch a good man at work and you will see 

 what I mean. Let us suppose that it is a day 

 in the first half of April. It has been a dry 

 March and the river, a large one, is low and 

 stainlessly clear. The trout are in the fast 

 streams, but not in the thin water : they will 

 not be there for a fortnight yet. Finally let us 

 imagine that it is 11 o'clock in the morning : 

 that the March Brown is on but not up; that 

 the sky is blue with fleecy clouds and the wind 

 light, and that you and I are seated on the 

 bank watching a famous fisherman fishing up 

 a famous river. 



Though not a fish breaks the water, he at 

 once begins catching trout. He moves quickly. 

 He seems to fish with no regularity : a cast here 

 straight up, then no more for several yards, 

 though the stream looks to you just the same : 

 then three or four casts across, slightly up : and 

 then one right across, allowed to come round 

 below him. So he goes on and soon wades out 

 at the head of the stream ; you have counted up 

 and he has caught eight. Now, ask him how he 

 managed to know that a fish had risen when 

 nothing broke the water. Can he tell you? 



