ON ANGLING. 121 



stream before you, one communicating its terror to the next, 

 until they are going up the river like a flock of sheep up 

 a lane, causing a small tidal wave to undulate before them. 

 The only way, as it seems to me, on these small rivers, is 

 to learn the haunts of the big fish before you begin to angle 

 for them ; mark down precisely, by this bit of spear grass or 

 that bunch of king-cup, the spot which you mean to take 

 up when you cast, and quietly crawl to it from well out in 

 the field and well away from the bank. And this that I 

 say in regard to walking along the side of the stream applies 

 yet more emphatically to wading. If you wade up a small 

 river you create a commotion and a scare indescribable. 

 If you have a broad, shallow water, there is no reason why you 

 should not wade so as to be able to cover the whole of it, 

 and if you are fishing the wet fly down-stream, you may wade 

 without causing the same disturbance in the minds of fish 

 which you have still to angle for ; but, for the most part, it is 

 wiser to confine your wading, when you are fishing up-stream, 

 to an occasional quiet step into the water and a few steps 

 out and up in order to cast to a particular spot or to a particular 

 fish. That, at least, is the practice that I personally both 

 commend and follow. Nevertheless, although when dry-fly 

 fishing I wade thus seldom, I am all for the wearing of waders 

 waders to the thigh. Thus clad you can splash through 

 the overflow in the water meadows and take no wetting of 

 the feet. You may say that knee-boots would suffice for 

 this protection : and so they would ; but remember that you 

 are not to stand up to the full height of your fine manly figure 

 when you cast to the fish. More often than not you are to be 

 kneeling to them in a suppliant pose, and knee-boots are no 

 protection for the knee in such a position. The knee is a 

 joint very susceptible of rheumatism, and a most valuable 

 joint which deserves all cherishing. With thigh waders you 

 can kneel in dry comfort. Therefore it is that I both commend 

 and wear them. 



I do not propose to write anything at all elaborate for 

 your instruction in respect to the flies that you should use, 

 for several reasons. In the first place, the angling art is long 

 and life is short, and any disquisition on flies, to be at all 

 adequate, would need far more space than the whole of these 



