50 BROOK AND RIVER TROUTING 



he, with the lightest heart and full of hope, approached 

 a steady flowing reach where the banks were here and 

 there fringed with clumps of willows. 



A fish rose well out in the stream, then another, 

 and another ; and as the tackle had been fitted up 

 before leaving the farm-house, even to the putting on 

 of a cast of flies, it was not long before those fish, which 

 were apparently seizing every fly that passed over 

 them, were covered again and again. All to no purpose, 

 for the trout proved very discriminating, and at last, 

 when a fish half rose without breaking the surface of 

 the water, a change of fly was decided on. 



Hovering round the willows, dancing to and fro in 

 the air, were hundreds of insects, which on examination 

 proved to be Light and Dark Silverhorns. Five 

 minutes had barely elapsed when, with a Light Silver- 

 horns to replace his point fly and a Dark one as first 

 dropper, the angler was again assailing his fish ; but he 

 could get no more satisfactory response than a bulge 

 or two. Then the position of these two flies was 

 reversed, a step which often pays, but it did not on 

 that occasion. 



The case was becoming desperate, for the rise would 

 soon be over. So with some reluctance he left the 

 rising fish and waded into the stream and put his 

 flies into a likely looking eddy below an overhanging 

 willow bush growing on the far bank. Almost imme- 

 diately a fish was battling for dear life, but without 



