THE MAYFLY IN HAMPSHIRE. 163 



denying, from what one hears about the bags 

 made on privately owned water, where the fish 

 will take readily, that it must be an easy 

 process to attract, hook, and land them. Even 

 in boat fishing on a lake, stories are frequently 

 told of the cast blowing overboard, and being 

 at once seized by a good fish. This experience 

 too has befallen more than one beginner about 

 to fish from the bank or a bridge. 



Of recent years mayfly tackle has become 

 more delicate. The casts are finer, and the 

 flies smaller; the result being that the style of 

 fishing approximates far more to plain dry fly 

 as practised with red quill, or black gnat, during 

 the preceding month. I am quite sure that the 

 man, who has never thrown a mayfly until he 

 has graduated in all the troubles and blanks of 

 several previous seasons, becomes more success- 

 ful than his friend who perhaps boasts of the 

 fish he caught the first day he ever received an 

 invitation to good private water in a favoured 

 first week of June. As a rule, one is I think 

 prone to cast far too quickly, carelessly, and fre- 

 quently with the mayfly : to take too little 

 trouble in approaching the water and the rising 

 fish. The tendency is to underrate your enemy 

 before he is hooked, and to overrate him after 

 you have done so. 



In spite of seven or eight years experience, I 

 often find it more difficult to attract a good 

 feeding trout with a mayfly in June than with 

 a sedge in August or September. No doubt, 

 much depends upon the individual craftiness of 



