422 SALMON AND TROUT. 



summer. My opportunities of trying this phase of sport have 

 been limited, but when I have tried it I have rarely failed. 

 And I think true anglers will agree with me that if you can kill 

 with the fly there is no method so entirely satisfactory. The 

 work is so clean, so light, so simple, yet at the same time so 

 artistic. You have no struggle against the perversity of baits 

 that won't spin, the sliminess of villainous lobworms which it 

 vexes your finer instincts to put on the hook. You are in 

 active exercise throughout, yet escape the monotonous and 

 sometimes wearisome exertion of a long bout with a spinning- 

 rod, where cast must follow cast as regularly as the strokes of a 

 steam-engine, yet each must be regulated with the nicest judg- 

 ment. If you are a practised hand and I would hardly 

 recommend a novice to seek his trouting in the Thames you 

 will wield your ' two-handed engine ' easily and confidently, 

 with no misgiving as to where or how your fly will fall. You 

 will be instinctively accurate in dropping it now behind some 

 root-bound projection of the bank, now in the foam of an eddy, 

 now where a clod or a stone forms a break in the gliding 

 shallow. 



Fly-fishing on the Thames is much like fly-fishing in other 

 rivers, only as the Kentucky man said of Sunday in his State 

 as compared to other days ' rather more so.' The fish being 

 fewer and larger, their haunts will be not merely in good places, 

 but in the very best ; such as you have found the master fish 

 select for themselves in well stocked rivers. The tastes and 

 habits of large trout vary little in this respect. I remember 

 being very much struck when in Tasmania by the certainty 

 with which I could spot the large trout, bred from British ova, 

 while there were yet but few. There was a beautiful tributary 

 of the Derwent. known as the Russell's Falls River, in which 

 several good fish had been seen though none yet taken. On a 

 promising day when the water was slightly coloured, I recon- 

 noitered some 500 yards of this stream, fly-rod in hand, in 

 order to mark the most promising casts before commencing 

 operations. The result of my scrutiny was that at my very first 



