TROUT-FISHING 

 Is often good trout-fishing; it is in basins of limited dimensions that 

 trout are soon exterminated by pike, which then take to feeding upon 

 each other. Where they do co- exist sport of a very exciting order may 

 be had by the fly-fisher who hits off the right time. That time generally 

 occurs somewhere in the last week of May or the first fortnight of June, 

 and the moment is when a heavy rise of large natural flies is on. Then 

 the big trout that have outlived risk from all but very large pike come 

 boldly to the surface, and flies cast where one has been seen to rise is almost 

 sure to establish business relations. I think the loveliest brace of trout 

 that ever I caught were taken thus in Loch Dornal, Ayrshire. I had no boat, 

 and it was tantalizing in no small measure to see fish rising far beyond 

 the compass of a nine -footer; but by wading in a sandy bay I managed to 

 cover two rising fish, and brought them both to land, the largest weighing 

 3J lb. Nobody, until he has experience of it, knows how a trout hooked 

 under such conditions can fight. Lake trout are usually caught from a 

 boat, and although, even so, the play of a north-country fish is a brilliant 

 affair compared with that of a Hampshire trout of equal weight, the 

 boat enables the angler to follow his fish, thereby gaining an unfair ad- 

 vantage. But a man wading is practically a fixed point; he must remain in 

 shallow water while the trout fights hard for the deep. In salmon-fishing 

 with strong tackle the fisher can put on considerable pressure; but trout 

 gut will not stand against the rush of a three -pounder; the fish must have 

 what he chooses to take, and there is a point beyond which the cast will 

 not stand the strain of submerged reel-line. I have been run out and broken 

 by large lake trout through no fault of my own, and the chance of this adds 

 materially to the excitement of the game. 



I have recourse to my fishing diary for a notable example of the man 

 afioat being beaten by the man ashore. A friend took me to fish one after- 

 noon in July, 1890, in the Thornton Reservoir which supplies the town of 

 Leicester. It is a fine sheet of water varied by capes and bays, as like as 

 no matter to a natural lake. My friend (at least as good a trout fisher as 

 myself) took a boat, while I preferred to fish from the bank, although I 

 had no waders. When we met again at sundown, I had twenty trout 

 weighing 24 lb. and he had eleven weighing 11 lb., the aggregate basket 

 being 35 lb. 



A word of caution about loch -wading. It is much safer than river - 

 wading, owing to the absence of current, but it has a danger peculiar to 

 itself owing to the treacherous nature of the bottom. A smooth, gravelly 

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