ON ANGLING. 119 



I have indicated to you, or have tried to do so, how 

 you should proffer the fly to trout rising in most of the different 

 situations in which you are at all likely to find them. Of 

 course, there are fish which rise in places where it is almost 

 hopeless to invite them to look at the artificial fly. There 

 are those fish in back-waters where the natural flies become 

 becalmed, out of the stream, and go slowly circling round 

 with a lazy trout occasionally rousing himself sufficiently 

 from his laziness to gulp one of them down. It is 

 rather a hopeless-looking place* all the less attractive 

 because of scum, composed of tiny particles of flotsam, which 

 always gathers in such situations. But this scum really 

 gives you a better chance than you would have in its absence, 

 for it evidently obscures things from the sharp eyes of the 

 fish, even as it would from your own, and now and again, 

 almost as much to your astonishment as delight, a trout may, 

 as if in a fit of absence of mind, suck in one of your flies by 

 mistake, and it is then " up to you " to see that he pays the 

 penalty due for his error. And remember this for your 

 comfort, that although on any one day it may be easy to 

 find fish which it is impossible at the moment to delude with 

 an artificial fly, still that is an impossibility which does not 

 repeat itself at every moment and on every day of the year. 

 A place may be impossible of successful fishing on one day and 

 with one type of weather and one direction of wind, but 

 when wind and weather and perhaps the height of the 

 water are all changed, it may become perfectly fishable. 

 Make a note of fish rising, if they look as if worth the catching, 

 in these impossible places ; resolve to pay them a visit 

 another day when the conditions favour you more and the 

 fish less. The most deadly weather of all deadly for the 

 fish, I mean is that which brings a warm, light rain. It is 

 weather in which flies are likely to be on the water, although 

 some breeds, such as the Iron Blue, seem actually to prefer 

 a blizzard, and the spots of rain evidently confuse the 

 eyesight of the fish very badly. I have known a stretch 

 of the Test where I hardly ever caught a fish, no matter 

 how keenly they were rising, on a fine day, yet on a day of 

 soft rain, such as I speak of, I have caught them there so 

 readily that it ceased to be amusing ; it was hardly sport. 



