ON SEA TROUT 



hope of making the fish think it was free and cease its efforts, 

 and each time it seemed puzzled, and let me very quietly and 

 cautiously recover some line. Whether a catastrophe was 

 really saved by these tactics I cannot be sure, but they are worth 

 trying in an emergency. That grilse, at any rate, was landed. 



In lochs, the fish are even more capricious in their moods 

 than they are in rivers. One generally attributes these moods 

 to the weather. There always seems to me to be something in 

 the weather, on any given day, when the fish will not rise, 

 which is the cause of my having no sport ; and, being of an 

 excessively sanguine temperament — of which I hope never to 

 be cured — I discover that evening some change, actual or im- 

 pending, in the wind, or the sky, or the temperature, which I 

 am satisfied will make the next day entirely different. I look 

 forward full of happy expectation. Yet with all this study of 

 weather, I have not been able to arrive at any theory which is 

 satisfactory. 



The best day I ever had with sea trout in a river was when 

 the water was not very high, and there was a gloomy gale from 

 the east in August. The best day I ever had on a loch was 

 bright and hot, and with only a very slight breeze — not nearly 

 enough in appearance for fishing. Till midday I had not had 

 one rise, and had only seen two fish. Then the breeze im- 

 proved just enough to make a small ripple, and quantities of 

 daddy-long-legs came upon the water ; the little black loch 

 trout all under four ounces were very pleased with these 

 straggling insects, and pursued and took them. I did not 

 actually see a sea trout take one, but the large fish began to 



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