112 Dry -Fly Fishing. 



Gr.W. Railway train suiting, 1 was by 1.30. p.m. 

 kneeling on the bank of one of the best fisheries of 

 the Itchen, bounded on the west side by Shawford 

 Downs and Oliver's Battery, ready to make my first 

 cast over a grayling. A break on the surface was 

 seen : my fly was presented lightly over it, and a 

 grayling weighing lib. hooked, played, and landed. 

 A first success is very encouraging. The main 

 stream was very low here, as it is constantly diverted 

 for milling and irrigation purposes, and had been so 

 for several weeks, the sandbanks in mid- stream 

 standing above the surface and green with vegeta- 

 tion ; also the shallows in places were barely covered, 

 one's fly catching on to weeds at every recovery of 

 it and necessitating a clearance. Moreover, the 

 grayling were only moving a long distance off, and 

 barely reachable even by shooting-out casts, nor 

 were they either furrowing the surface or rising in 

 any other part of the fishery. My whole practice, 

 therefore, for over two hours was limited to this very 

 difficult fishing, with the fair result, by the time the 

 sun went down at 3.57, that two and a half brace of 

 handsome grayling had been killed. As I walked 

 back, rather sad that my season had now ended, the air 

 became piercingly cold. The planets Saturn and Mars 

 in the south-western heavens were some hours later 

 to come into conjunction with the crescent moon, 

 and next day was to be the coldest of the old year. 



