58 CHATS ON ANGLING. 



3 lb. in weight and in magnificent condition, but the month was against 

 us, and we had to replace him with all due care in his native element 

 before resuming our search for the grayling, who were not at all inclined 

 to favour us, on that occasion at any rate. 



This particular fish certainly endorsed my view, for I felt confident 

 in my first opinion, viz., that it was the rise of a trout, and not that 

 of a grayling. The keeper, however, was equally confident until he was 

 proved wrong, and, as his experiences were a hundredfold greater than 

 mine, I would certainly not attempt to advance my own as against his. 

 It is so terribly easy to generalise from inadequate experience. 



One thing I certainly have learned with regard to grayling fishing 

 with a hackle fly, fished wet and up stream, and that is, how easily one 

 may miss them through want of rapidity in the strike. I remember a 

 friend of mine dancing with laughter on the river bank as he watched 

 me miss rise after rise under such circumstances. I seemed to be always 

 a little after the fair. It was blind kind of work, casting at the rises, 

 the fish having to come up from the bottom to the fly, and somehow 

 or other they seemed always to take the wrong psychological moment 

 for their rise as far as I was concerned. Occasionally, of course, I 

 hooked what I fancied to be a silly idiot of a fish, and it was not until 

 my friend had a turn at them and then declared they were rising disgrace- 

 fully short that I was able to turn the laugh against him. When I was 

 angling it was always the fault of the angler that the fish were not 

 hooked ; when his turn came it was entirely the fault of the fish. At 

 the same time it is undeniable that to secure grayling, especially heavy 

 ones, by this manner of angling requires great alertness, and, as it 

 were, sympathy of touch in hooking them. 



I cannot pretend to any considerable experiences in grayling fishing, 

 but I do not agree with Mr. G. A. B. Dewar, who, in his " Book of 

 the Dry Fly," p. 54 (Lawrence & Bullen, 1897), states confidently that 

 angling for the grayling with the dry fly is "poor fun." On the contrary, 

 I have found him a bold riser, and a really free fighter in his own 

 style. He will take a dry fly in hot, bright weather, though his real 

 value comes in on frosty days, after the trout have earned their well- 

 deserved rest from the plague of artificial flies. A grayling, moreover, 

 is in his element in deep pools and quiet hollows, where one would 



