SOME CONTROVERSIES 139 



rise was developing. I had come to a pool where I 

 knew there were always a number of good fish, and 

 these I found feeding vigorously in a sort of chain 

 in the glide at the head. They were rising just 

 as chalk stream trout do, and must have been lying 

 close to the surface, though I could not actually 

 see them. I tried them first with the three-fly 

 collar which I had on the line, with no result beyond 

 putting some of them down. Then I retreated to a 

 rock, sat down on it, and told myself that this was 

 just such an occasion as the dry-fly man in a strange 

 country hopes for. And I made preparations for 

 a bit of dry-fly work. Meanwhile the trout which 

 had been put down seemed to recover confidence, 

 and by the time I was ready all were as hard at work 

 as ever. 



To my disgust when the far-famed dry fly came 

 to the test it was as futile as the three-fly collar 

 had been. One or two fish seemed to push it (or 

 them ; there were several patterns) contemptuously 

 with their noses, but nothing else happened. I 

 had to own myself defeated, in spite of progress. 

 But as a last resort, I decided to try a single wet 

 fly, a small blue upright, fished as carefully as I could 

 manage it over individual fish. And this I did 

 with the satisfactory result of getting five respectable 

 fish out of that single pool, besides hooking and losing 

 one or two more. It did not occur to me at the 



