104 ELEMENTS OF ANGLING. 



is very likely to get over the tops of one's 

 stockings and trickle down inside ; the result is 

 peculiarly uncomfortable. The fly retrieved, or lost 

 and replaced, the novice gradually finds himself 

 nearing the head of the shallow. Here the water is 

 swifter and rougher, and a rise is very difficult to 

 detect. Perhaps a pluck at the end of the line will 

 warn him that a fish took his fly unperceived. In 

 such water I usually give up looking at the place 

 where I imagine the flies to be and pay attention to 

 the line instead, watching the end of the cast where 

 it is joined to the reel-line. This is the more easy 

 if one shortens line so that very little but the cast 

 is ever in the water. Any stoppage of the line 

 indicates a rise, and one must strike the instant it 

 occurs. There, following this advice, the angler 

 has hooked a fish not more than a rod's length 

 away from himself. In swift, broken water i8in. 

 or 2ft. in depth one often gets rises almost at one's 

 very feet, and a long line is there quite unnecessary, 

 and even disadvantageous. 



Above the rapid water comes a long reach of 

 quiet pool, whose surface is quite glassy. This 

 sort of stretch is, I always think, the most difficult 

 of all on a mountain stream. It contains plenty of 

 trout, many of them big ones, but unless a smart 

 breeze ruffles it they are almost uncatchable. Except 



