TROUT-FISHING IN 

 BROOKS 



I: INTRODUCTORY 



I DO not propose to institute an invidious 

 comparison between rivers great or small 

 and the modest little brooks to which I 

 want to entice the reader there are more trout 

 in the former but I do think, and experience 

 has confirmed the opinion, that the claims of the 

 last are not established at anything like their 

 true sporting value. How many a man will view 

 contemptuously the tributary beck he drives over 

 en route to larger water ; yet, were he knowledge- 

 able, he would have drawn trumps in the beck. 



I met a certain colonel one May day on the Dart 

 who complained bitterly that except half a 

 dozen fingerlings he had done nothing for two 

 days. His flies were all right, but the thorough 

 education the fish had had all the spring, plus 

 pollution as the water fined down, had rendered 

 them singularly obtuse to artificial dainties. I 



