26 THE TROUT ARE RISING 



A great many professional men are keen fly- 

 fishermen and especially doctors and barristers. 

 Their trained minds and observing habits get to 

 work almost unconsciously when out with rod 

 and line. They revel in the open air. I have a 

 pleasant memory of watching a famous London 

 surgeon beside the Colne at West Drayton. He 

 had in his landing net a three-pound trout which 

 he had just caught on the Mayfly, and was look- 

 ing as happy as a schoolboy over it. " There 

 is," wrote John Bickerdyke, when angling editor 

 of the Field) " so much delicacy with science in- 

 volved in angling as practised to-day that 1 venture 

 upon the dangerous assertion that of all the sports 

 angling is followed by the largest number of men 

 with refined tastes, and thus, perhaps, it is that 

 so many professional men, particularly doctors 

 and clergymen, are enthusiastic fly-fishermen." 



Piscator non so/urn piscatur, as the motto says. 

 The angler has, and uses, the chance of studying 

 nature, field and hedgerow, the things that grow, 

 the animals that move, the birds that fly. As he 

 waits for the rise to begin, or pauses after a 

 capture, he will perchance see flashing by " king- 

 fisher blue, bird of the sunlight" ; or some 

 small bird will alight by the waterside, have a 

 series of brief baths, then fly away with an air 

 of" feeling much fresher now " ; or, perhaps, if all 

 is still, the angler may see a throstle engaged with 

 a huge worm ; there is a final shake, the worm is 

 swallowed at one gulp, and there follows that 

 look of triumph, which says quite clearly, (< There's 



