EDUCATION OF THE SOUTH-COUNTRY TROUT. 25 



and as a natural consequence trout become less confiding and far more 

 easily alarmed. Modern agricultural drainage has, moreover, increased 

 the difficulty by carrying off the water too rapidly. It behoves votaries of 

 the gentle art to consider most carefully whether anything can be done to 

 remedy the seriousness of the future outlook, and to disseminate the 

 results of their inquiry ; and if the Fly Fishers' Club, or some well-known 

 leaders of repute, would take the matter up and tackle it seriously they 

 would earn the blessings of the angling world. 



It is considered to be undoubtedly a disadvantage in a club water to 

 include one or two pre-eminently brilliant anglers, as it seems to breed a 

 fear of their always being able to catch the easy fish, so that the more 

 difficult ones only are left for the ordinary angler to attack. Not long ago 

 I was invited to fish a certain well-known beat on the Itchen, but my host, 

 in inviting me, said, " I don't know if it is much use, for So-and-So fishes 

 our water, and has caught all the easy fish." This may be true in a sense, 

 but favourite positions are always re-taken by other fish if the former 

 occupant is killed. Just as a house in Grosvenor Square, or some well- 

 known centre of fashion, will always secure a tenant, so a position where 

 the trend of the current brings the flies quietly and steadily over a fish 

 will never remain unoccupied. It is not so much the fish that is easy as 

 his position, and therefore the ordinary duffer need never despond. One 

 thing is certain — that the brilliant angler will never scare fish unneces- 

 sarily, and I would rather fish behind such an one than a so-called angler 

 who, having successfully put his fish down by bad angling, proceeds to 

 stand upright and possibly walk along the bankside close to the water's 

 edge, scaring many a fish on his way up, utterly regardless of his brother 

 anglers. Indeed, in this respect I think the etiquette of angling is hardly 

 sufficiently considered in these modern days. Who is there that has not 

 met, on club waters, the ardent and unsuccessful angler who wanders up 

 and down, covering vast stretches of water, and effectually scaring many 

 otherwise takeable fish, in the vain hope that he may find some purblind 

 trout idiotic enough to take his proffered fly ? I consider that unwritten 

 etiquette demands that the utmost care should be taken by fishermen to 

 do all in their power to prevent spoiling the sport of those who may be 

 following. I can well recollect a day when the wind was foul, and there 

 was one stretch of water sheltered on the windward side by a thick belt of 



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