2 8o DRY-FLY FISHING 



does away down beside the cities of the plain, the 

 breeze is sweeter, stronger, and there is a finer, 

 cooler draught sweeping down the glens. 



The trout are wary enough, but food is not too 

 plentiful ; they do not like this unceasing sunshine 

 any more than we, and yet they dare not allow many 

 flies or nymphs or beetles to pass unheeded. They 

 have to reach some day the same form as their 

 brethren of the lower reaches, and they have less 

 time for the purpose as well as smaller stores to draw 

 upon. Therefore there are no lazy days, no wasted 

 opportunities in the life of the trout in a swift moor- 

 land stream ; there are many hard days of hunger 

 in the winter that must come, no matter how cloud- 

 less skies may be now. 



Sunshine assists us to combat their craftiness, for 

 it plays upon the glinting gravel and the ripple, 

 giving the lure many points of light, obscuring its 

 deficiencies, and helping to make our approach more 

 difficult of detection. We welcome all the assist- 

 ance we can get when waters are at their lowest 

 recorded level. 



The river here in these green uplands would 

 usually be designated a typical Scottish wet-fly 

 water, fast and free, fretting among boulders, sliding 

 down a steep glide, gurgling in a little pot, slipping 

 along a broad pool, tumbling over a rocky ledge, 

 singing over a gravelly shallow. We say it is an 

 ideal dry-fly water, for so we find it, and the simple 

 reason is that in summer at least, when we know 

 it, the floating-fly utterly vanquishes the sunken 

 variety. 



There are places, the swiftest streams, for example, 

 where a little pink worm will easily prove itself 



