THE DUFFER'S FORTNIGHT 203 



will have nothing to say to two-pounders on such 

 a day, for their betters fill your eye, though if you 

 chose you could levy big toll on them. Such days 

 are on record. 



Two or three brace averaging four pounds there 

 have been such baskets, and possibly will be again. 

 There are waters where the thing could easily be 

 done with a stroke of luck to help. And there are 

 waters which offer greater inducements to effort 

 even than these, waters where lurk real monsters, 

 hardly seen all the rest of the year except as an 

 occasional wave and a splash under a glittering 

 cascade of small coarse-fish fry, but possibly to 

 become surface feeders on one or two days of the 

 duffer's fortnight. The ten-pound trout does exist 

 in some rivers, and he has been seen feeding on 

 Mayflies as heartily as his smaller brothers. But 

 even to get a rise out of him means a waiting game, 

 for he does not come up for the Mayfly as a matter 

 of course. The best you can hope for is that he 

 may come up. And if he comes up you may not 

 be able to do anything with him. Still, it is worth 

 a June fortnight even to have watched such a trout 

 feed. 



That is the spirit which has animated nearly all 

 my Mayfly fishing for years and it explains, if it 

 does not altogether excuse, a very poor total of fish 



