MAYFLY ON A SURREY STREAM 163 



The next day, a lovely one, with bright sun and soft 

 airs, I found out the secret of the trout not taking a 

 fly offered to them. Fly being scarce, all were 

 wanderers. At the same bend where I had caught the 

 two-pounder I saw a rise, and then, thanks to the sun, 

 the fish, which was on the move. It took me pretty 

 well an hour to find out what he was doing cruising 

 round and round the bay, sucking in an occasional fly 

 or spent gnat as he went. He was patrolling a regular 

 beat of some twenty yards, and sometimes, after my 

 fly had fallen in apparently the right place, it would 

 prove that he was five yards farther on. I did not 

 want to run the risk of dropping it right over his nose 

 and perhaps alarming him, so at last I adopted the 

 nervous policy of casting a spent gnat to a point which 

 I knew he would reach sooner or later, and there letting 

 it stop till he did so. Lack of stream made this 

 possible, but the minutes of waiting were anxious. 

 When at last the expected happened and the fly dis- 

 appeared in a goodly swirl, I was almost paralyzed with 

 terror. However, all went well, and after a fair but 

 not inordinate contest I was exulting over a real beauty 

 of two and three quarter pounds, very much like the 

 two-pounder in shape and colour. 



After that a brother angler called my attention to a 

 trout under a bush. The bush was round, and right in 

 the water ; the fish was rising in the middle of it. 

 Could I catch it ? I thought decidedly not. One can- 

 not throw a fly downstream into a bush with much 

 hope of success, and if one did, trout do not climb up 

 after it. I was about to be even more sarcastic, when 

 suddenly I saw the fish, a big yellow creature ; it swam 



