122 AN OPEN CREEL 



him, but waited until there should come a lull, and, 

 in the meantime, began to fish downstream with 

 three flies. 



I never had a great deal of skill in downstream 

 fishing, and I was not surprised when almost at once 

 a good trout robbed me of the second dropper. Nor 

 was I surprised when, on searching for the damping- 

 box, in which I had put some spare flies to soften the 

 gut, I found that it had been left behind. Accidents 

 of this kind will happen, so I shrugged my shoulders, 

 took out my fly-book, and began to disentangle half 

 a dozen Greenwell's glories, which had got themselves 

 into hopeless confusion. After a good deal of patient 

 work I extricated one and put the gut into my mouth. 

 Then the other five blew away and vanished utterly. 

 As they represented my remaining stock of this valu- 

 able fly, I spent half an hour in looking for them. 

 Then I shrugged my shoulders once more, fastened on 

 the dropper, and returned to the fishing. In less than 

 a minute my last Greenwell was gone in another fish. 

 The fly-book was open once more, and a blue upright 

 was taken out, while three red palmers were blown 

 out, never to be seen again by me, at all events. 

 Looking for them, however, occupied a certain amount 

 of time, and it was fully twenty minutes before I got to 

 fishing again. 



So far I had been content to let my line float out 

 with the wind and settle on the water where it would ; 

 but now I desired to reach an eddy behind a big stone 

 close to the opposite bank. To this end I attempted 

 a cast across the wind, and failed utterly. A collar 

 of three flies wrapped round one is an awkward thing 



