188 TROUT LORE 



assert that one cannot use too many superlatives 

 when attempting to describe a perfect May morn- 

 ing. I rest my case, not with shut-ins and mis- 

 anthropes, but with red-blooded lovers of trout 

 streams and God's good out-o'doors. Have I 

 overstated the case? Have I used too high- 

 sounding words? Have I even begun to de- 

 scribe a May morning? Upon the shoulders of 

 those Waltonites who know I throw the burden 

 of my defense. 



Such was the setting for my piscatorial act; 

 and yet the fish would not rise. Skulking some- 

 where 'neath the deep shadows they were; flit- 

 ting live insects nor fuzzy-wuzzy lures cast most 

 seductively stirred them not at all. "What was 

 wrong?" Let him answer who can; I only know 

 the fish were "off their feed." Up and down 

 the stream I wandered the whole livelong day 

 and yet not a fin moved, not a glancing trout did 

 I see. When midday arrived I built my little 

 fire, brewed a cup of tea, fried bacon on a stick, 

 and invoked the muses. Casting with such skill 

 as I know how, sending the flies dancing from 

 wavelet to wavelet, or to kiss the surface of some 

 quiet pool as lightly as thistle-down borne upon 

 a summer's breeze, I whiled the afternoon away 

 and watched the sun decline in the heavens with 



