206 TROUT FISHING 



eyes may have closed ; I do not remember. Certain 

 it is that there was no occasion for using the rod in 

 spite of all the fly alder, button, sedges (various 

 and many), olives and their spinners, black gnat 

 in droves, yellow May duns, and occasional green 

 drakes. Not a fish more important than a small 

 dace moved to anything. 



It was about four o'clock when the Mayfly began 

 to hatch, induced thereto by an interval when clouds 

 covered the sun. But the clouds passed, the heat 

 returned, and the hatch ceased abruptly. I left 

 the riverside thereupon in quest of some sort of 

 meal to hearten me against the work in prospect 

 when the fly really should come on. I timed the 

 thing well, for the hatch really did begin as I 

 returned. And a very good hatch too. But I 

 cannot say that it made much difference. The 

 dace dimpled a little more freely and may have been 

 a bit bigger, but it was long before I saw a trout, 

 one of those few big ones which the water holds, 

 make any sign of life. So there was still no fishing 

 to speak of. One gets soon tired of spoiling May- 

 flies over dace. After a while, however, there was 

 a plop from a heavy fish, and up he came again in 

 the stream between the two eddies, the place where 

 day dreams had figured the record trout a-rising. 

 Not to waste words, he took at the first fair cast, 

 and plunged deep down into the twelve-foot pool, 



