FIRST EMPTYING. 7 



stuffs that will prevent everybody and everything, except 

 the flies, coming within a hundred yards of you, or you may 

 put your head in a muslin bird cage, but the fly will be 

 there. The villain will pursue you, and the only comfort I 

 can think of in conjunction with the matter is that the 

 grouse shooter has him, and has him badly. If the 

 language used at the flies during the second half of the 

 month of August could be collected and carefully labelled 

 with the names of its original owners, what a revelation 

 there would be. 



Now, when you wade into this little river, which you 

 must be warned is running rather too strong to enable you 

 to throw your worm in those places at which, at this time of 

 the year, you would expect trout to be lying, you must 

 necessarily throw your bait up stream, because the water is 

 clear though plentiful. And when your bait has reached 

 the water, it will either come with the stream back to your 

 feet, you raising the point of your rod gradually as it does 

 so, or it will stop quietly and without the smallest fuss. A 

 trout taking a worm in clear water takes it as gently as an 

 epicure swallows an oyster. He does not rise and make a 

 dash at it, as a big fellow will in the spring when the iron- 

 blue dun is on the water, and then dive down again with 

 a sound resembling that of a Chicago kiss which the 

 Bostonian girl says is like the splash of an empty bucket in 

 a horse pond he just takes it and holds on. Give him a 

 second in order to enable him to make sure he has got it, 

 and then let him have it ; that is, strike, but gently and 

 firmly. If your hooks are fast to a stone instead of being 

 in a trout, you will derive benefit from this advice, but 

 whenever your worm is checked in its downward progress 

 with the running stream, just give a wee bit strike, as the 

 Scotch say, and, mon, ye hav' him. In small streams worm 

 fishing of this kind needs to be carefully done ; it is a most 

 deadly method in skilful hands of clearing out the greater 



