86 FLY FISHING 



were generally pieces of weed actually in the 

 mouth of fish that were landed after being hung 

 up in weeds, but it seemed to me unlikely that 

 they really seized the weed with their mouths de- 

 liberately. One day, however, I happened to be 

 playing a trout on a clear shallow, where there 

 were no large patches of weed, and where every 

 movement could be seen : the fish came near a 

 small piece of weed and stuck there, and the 

 strain on the rod became that of a dead weight. 

 The thing looked absurd, for the weed was much 

 too small to conceal the fish, and only the head 

 was in contact with it. There was nothing but this 

 ridiculous little patch of weed and the trout a 

 fish of not much over a pound and yet I could 

 not move it ! When the fish was landed, there as 

 usual was some weed inside the mouth. It will 

 of course occur to any one as a possible explana- 

 tion (and so it did to me), that the line may have 

 got round the little patch of weed, and so caused 

 the feeling of pulling at a dead weight ; but it ap- 

 peared to me at the time that this was not so, and 

 subsequent experiences of the same kind in shallow 

 water, where I have been wading close to the fish, 

 and have been able to examine the situation at 



