180 ELEMENTS OF ANGLING. 



the angler has to be very prompt in hooking thenru 

 With very fine gut it is safer to strike from the reel. 

 One fishes either across or down stream, drawing 

 the flies slowly through the water, or up stream, 

 letting them come down with the current. I prefer 

 the last method, as I hook more fish by it, and find 

 that often a dace rises as the fly falls and is hooked 

 at once. In dragging the flies one gets many more 

 abortive plucks than fish. With the dry fly one 

 fishes rather over the shoal than over any individual 

 dace, and with small ones one must be no less 

 prompt than with the wet fly. With fish over Jib. 

 it is sometimes different. I have known really big 

 dace rise at a dry fly in a very leisurely way, and 

 in such a case one should not hurry the strike. All 

 the flies mentioned as wet flies do equally well for 

 dry-fly work, and any of the other patterns in the 

 novice's trout box should kill dace, for they are not 

 as a rule very particular. The best all-round fly is 

 perhaps the coachman. 



The novice may sometimes get very fine sport 

 with roach and rudd. Rudd, as has before been, 

 said, feed principally in shallow water, among beds 

 of lilies, rushes, or reeds, and their presence caa 

 usually be detected, for they make themselves pretty 

 obvious in hot weather. Often one can see them, 

 like chub, on the surface. Roach also are occa- 



