DRY-FLY MEDITATIONS 83 



useful, so a description of four varieties of the evening 

 rise witnessed on the Test may not be amiss. The 

 first was nearly at the end of June, after an amazingly 

 hot day, as hot days go in England now. A north- 

 westerly breeze and a conspicuous lack of fly had kept 

 the fish down, except for one or two old stagers that 

 were feeding lazily and safely on black smuts, whose 

 microscopic size forbade imitation. But in the evening 

 the wind dropped, the sky became a glorious expanse 

 of gold and rose as the sun sank, and the rise seemed 

 a moral certainty. 



Placed by my friend's kindness at the very best 

 spot on his water, a gliding shallow above the weir on 

 which the three-pounders were wont to dine, I esteemed 

 myself fortunate, and was almost immediately re- 

 warded by seeing a rise. Creeping into a position 

 among some rushes below the fish, I covered him with 

 a medium-sized blue dun, which he took without 

 hesitation. But the luck was on his side. Though he 

 was apparently well hooked, and though the line never 

 slackened, the hook came away after his first magnifi- 

 cent rush, and I realized that one three-pounder at 

 least was not mine. I withdrew sadly, and made my 

 way upstream towards a bend where, above a piece of 

 camp-sheathing, a big fish had been spotted in the 

 daytime. The evening light made it possible to see a 

 rise from a long distance, and I soon marked a ring in 

 the desired spot close under my own bank. But, alas ! 

 even as I marked it something else claimed attention 

 a thin veil of mist that seemed to be coming down- 

 stream. I ran, but the mist reached him before I did, 

 and he rose no more. The fatal mist then moved on 



