CHAP. xii. The Indian Trout. 189 



a helping hand with a strike, but it is not the rule. If you are pulling 

 your fly fast enough, say just about as fast as you would have to pull 

 a small spoon at its slowest, they will hook themselves. If you hook 

 one the others will swarm round him out of curiosity, and sometimes 

 take another of the flies while you are playing him. I have thrown 

 a cast of three flies over a shoal, and had one on each fly simulta- 

 neously. The rod was a light one of 9 feet that could not lift Ib. 

 off the ground, and the fish were all of a size, to wit, Ib. each. The 

 first drop was rust-eaten and failed me, but the other two held, and I 

 killed the two fish. When you have two or three fish on at once like 

 that, and each one of them is too heavy for your rod to land, so that 

 you must use the landing-net, and have no attendant, you must play 

 them till they are pretty thoroughly beaten, and take the tail fish first 

 into the net, and so upwards. I had an attendant, but would not let 

 him approach for fear of scaring the pool, as I saw there was a goodly 

 shoal of fish there, and I wanted, and got, some more out of that shoal. 

 It is in very clear water that you fish for them, so you see all their 

 little games, and it adds not a little to the sport. Of course it 

 means also that you must stalk your water carefully, and throw a 

 fairly long line, for a small rod, and a single-handed trout rod is the 

 weapon. 



You will find them chiefly in the running pools, among rocks, 

 specially at the head of the pool where the run enters it, but sometimes 

 in the shallows also. 



The flies we used at the end of November were the size of a large 

 lake fly or the smallest yfo<? water salmon fly, on a No. 6 Limerick hook, 

 but smaller flies are used with advantage, I am told, when the water is 

 very low, a No. 9 Limerick being then preferable. 



As to colour a great authority recommended me his pet fly, No. 5 

 Limerick hook, my scale, body silver tinsel, legs grey, the hackles of 

 the jungle cock do well, wings two large and two small jungle-cock 

 feathers, using the glistening hard piece like a beetle case ordinarily 

 used at the shoulder of salmon flies. Others on the spot recom- 

 mended either black or red, with silver body. I found black served 

 me best. When they are taking well any colour is accepted. 



J. A. Bell, then a Captain, told me that he had taken small fish of 

 two and three and a half inches long out of them, which shows again 

 that they are highly predatory, and that at times a small spoon of three- 



