374 SALMON AND TROUT. 



Use the horizontal cast wherever possible, and at the first 

 attempt place the fly, quite dry and cocked, lightly on the 

 water so that it will float down over the feeding-place of your 

 fish accurately and without drag. If you succeed in rising 

 your fish, strike from the reel that is, without holding the 

 line in any way ; remember it requires very little force to drive 

 the barb of the hook home, and any excess is worse than 

 useless. While playing your fish, keep on taking him down 

 stream so as to drown him as quickly as possible, and at the 

 same time take him away from his lair, where every impedi- 

 ment by the assistance of which he is likely to break you is 

 well known to him. Do not attempt to net your fish until 

 he is exhausted ; the best indication of this is that he turns on 

 his side on top of the water. More big fish are lost by prema- 

 ture attempts at netting than from any other cause. Sink the 

 net deep and draw him over it, then gently raise the net and 

 draw him ashore, but do not attempt to lift him out at arm's 

 length. If sizeable, give him his quietus with one smart blow 

 at the summit of the spinal column ; if undersized, return him 

 gently to the water. 



If you cannot succeed in rising your fish, and determine to 

 seek for one feeding elsewhere, retire from the water with the 

 same caution you exercised when approaching ; still keep well 

 down, crouching or kneeling ; again remember to move during 

 a puff of wind and wait during the calm intervals, and altogether 

 be most careful not to show yourself and thus make him still 

 shyer than he is already, and this as much for the sake of the 

 next fisherman who may try him as for your own. Note par- 

 ticularly that at all times when moving, whether crawling up to 

 the water or beating a retreat from it, the slower and more 

 deliberate the motion, the less likely you are to scare the fish. 



Every one of the principles I have striven to inculcate apply 

 with equal force to dry fly fishing of every kind and description, 

 whether with duns, sedges, or May-flies, and most, if not indeed 

 all of them, are equally applicable to trout fishing with the sunk 

 or wet fly. 



