MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS 267 



much better. At last in despair I waded out, 

 and went down to a smooth piece of the river 

 between wooded banks. In this place the water 

 was clear, and varied from a foot to perhaps 

 three feet in depth. No one was fishing, and 

 there were trout rising in shoals and very quietly. 

 A stout March-brown, such as I had been using 

 above, would have put them all to flight, but the 

 trouble of using a dry fly for each separate trout 

 seemed out of proportion to the size of the fish. 

 Yet as I wanted very much to save an empty 

 basket, I gave up the hope of counting trout 

 that day by the dozen, put on one small olive 

 quill and waded in quietly below the rising fish. 

 They took the little dry fly as if they were 

 pleased to see it, and when the rise was over I 

 waded out with thirty-one trout in my basket. 

 The old angling diary to which I have referred 

 gives the weight of the largest as eight ounces. 

 It does not give the total weight, but I remember 

 congratulating myself on the fact that the average 

 size of my trout was at least equal to the size of 

 those generally caught with fly in April in the 

 more favourite streams above. As I emerged 

 from the trees on the bank, I met one of the best 



