FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



dancing clouds of brief-lived flies attract many predatory creatures 

 besides trout. Wagtails, swifts and all the swallow tribe, finches, star- 

 lings, blackbirds, thrushes, and even rooks and gulls seem to lose their 

 heads in the revelry; the river banks present one long-drawn pageant of 

 sunlit massacre. 



The festival ceases with the precarious honeymoon. Before the summer 

 solstice the passionate dancing of the males has ceased — ^their brides of 

 a day have dropped their eggs on the water — ^the surface of which is thickly 

 strewn in the backwaters with the corpses of both sexes, known among 

 fishermen as *' spent " or "burnt gnat." The trout, gorged by the frantic 

 orgies they have shared, sink into lethargy, indifferent to whatever swarms 

 of delicate duns may float over them; only an odd one here and there may 

 be tempted by a Wickham Fancy or, of an evening, by a Sedge. It is at 

 midsummer that the merit of a stream with no mayfly is apparent; for 

 although trout in all south -country waters seem to lose some of their 

 zest for surface feeding as the dog-days draw near, there is always some- 

 thing to be done among those that have not been debauched by the mayfly 

 surfeit. 



In July and August the gloaming is sometimes a useful hour. Wind- 

 less warmth brings out the sedges and the big trout come to the surface 

 after them; but the evening rise is always an elusive chance. A mourn- 

 ful angler has entered in the Houghton Club chronicle that "there has 

 been no evening rise for two years." At best, it is a feverish delight, as he 

 must admit who, wrestling with a tangled casting line or replacing a 

 lost fly in the waning light, hears the suck and sob of a three -pounder, 

 knowing that in fifteen minutes the last gleam on the water will be 

 quenched. No; a shining noontide with fleets of floating duns (" picket 

 wings " as they call them on the Test) is what the dry-fly fisher has learnt 

 to pray for as the best that fortune can bestow. 



No sooner had dry-fly fishing become established as a recognized 

 branch of sport than there ensued a rivalry between its practitioners 

 and the old wet-fly school, of whom they spoke slightingly as the " chuck- 

 and-chance-it " people. Admitting that dry-fly practice is the utmost 

 refinement to which angling can be, or has been, brought — ^that it re- 

 quires far more skill to detect and stalk a two -pounder in crystal clear 

 water, to bring the fly over him without the slightest " drag," and to land 

 him on a OOO hook and gossamer gut, than is required to kill a fish of 

 equal weight with stronger tackle in a swollen northern river, coloured 

 122 



