210 TROUT FISHING 



margin even from a distance I could see the spinners 

 beginning their evening dance. 



Thus to the water's edge. I looked down, and 

 behold the river w r as as soup in a tureen ! And so 

 it remained till I came sadly home, having seen a 

 magnificent hatch of fly with not a fish paying the 

 smallest attention to it. I learnt afterwards that 

 higher up the valley the thunderstorms of the day 

 before had brought with them floods of rain lasting 

 for hours. Which was an explanation, but no 

 comfort. On the whole this was the poorest 

 Mayfly season I have ever had. 



In other and better seasons I have had some fine 

 opportunities on first-rate waters, thanks to the 

 kindness of their owners or lessees, but I have never 

 succeeded in doing anything with them worth 

 mentioning. Somehow or other I always make the 

 worst of Mayfly opportunities, and the occa- 

 sional successes, which even I have not been able 

 wholly to avoid, have usually left a regret, amari 

 aliquid, behind. 



There was one very queer season on the Kennet 

 below Newbury, which started with a deluge, con- 

 tinued with a flood, and wound up with a spell of 

 winter. I got to the river on a Saturday morning to 

 find things not wholly inauspicious. Albeit in a close 

 and thundery air the morning hatch of fly was 

 satisfactory, and for about half an hour it seemed 



