426 SALMON AND TROUT. 



of a good Thames trout at feed on the fly within fair distance 

 of your line of drift, the odds ought to be heavy on the rod 

 against the fish, provided you do not lose nerve and bungle 

 your cast through eagerness. Ten to one he will take your fly 

 if you show it to him in good style, and the hooking him 

 effectually is almost a matter of course if you are not in a 

 hurry. Of all the trout that have risen to me in the Thames 

 I can remember to have lost but two. One made a fair 

 miss of my fly in the swirl of a hatch-hole, and I failed 

 perhaps through my own fault to lure him again. The 

 other a very heavy fish took me just at the stake-bound 

 head of an eyot close above Harleyford, and I thought I 

 had him safely fixed. But I was alone in a little sculling-punt, 

 and could not prevent his getting a start of me down stream, 

 an advantage which I always grudge to a good trout. The 

 way he pulled and bored down stream was a caution to 

 steam- tugs. I was bound to keep him in hand at all risks, 

 or he would have run my line out without giving me a 

 chance, and at last he fairly tore out the hold. With a 

 handy friend at the sculls I have little doubt I should have 

 saved him. 



Fishing with the natural May fly has with many good anglers 

 and on many well-known streams been a favourite method of 

 killing large trout about the beginning of June. Personally, 

 I have never cared for the use of the blow-line, or even for the 

 more skilful and less tedious practice of casting the natural fly, by 

 which a few exceptionally dexterous hands now and then succeed 

 in filling their baskets when the Green Drake is 'on.' Still, 

 had I heard of these methods being employed successfully 

 against Thames trout, I should have felt myself bound to 

 report accordingly. But though the May fly while steadily 

 diminishing during a long series of years, yet appears in con- 

 siderable numbers on many reaches of the Thames, I do not 

 remember to have heard of a single fish taken anywhere with 

 the natural fly. If such instances have occurred, they have 

 certainly been very rare. The cause of this is doubtless to be 



