WINCHESTER in 



for hours over rising trout without putting them 

 down, but it would be a mistake to infer that 

 theyavere indifferent to bad fishing. I suppose 

 habit had made them patient of many faults in 

 angling, which would have been resented at once 

 by fish of less experience. The presence of a 

 figure on the bank, the coming and going of 

 the gut and of an artificial fly, became to most 

 of these trout incidents inseparable from their 

 feeding time. These things must have seemed 

 to them attendant on every natural rise of 

 fly, features not altogether welcome possibly, 

 but on pain of complete starvation not to be 

 treated with indiscriminating fear. So the trout 

 rose ; they rose freely, and to some extent imper- 

 turbably, but they discriminated. To the end 

 I never was quite sure on what success depended 

 most on this wonderful piece of water. Fine gut 

 and a perfectly floated fly and exact casting must 

 have been of use here as everywhere, but these alone 

 were not enough. A Winchester trout might 

 disregard them all, and there was no magic attrac- 

 tion for it in the first cast; on the contrary, I 

 came to look upon it as an exception, if a trout 

 rose at my fly before it had been often fished over. 



