292, TROUT FISHING. 



the contrary. When you cannot rise the 

 trout with flies there is great propriety in leav- 

 ing them where they are. No gentleman 

 should ever permit himself to be reconciled to 

 worms and their abominations. They are of 

 disagreeable origin, and unsavoury altogether. 

 Nor when you have impaled them on a hook, 

 is their wriggling a cheerful sight. To the use 

 of the natural fly there are similar objections, 

 and it is also suggestive of poaching. Sneak- 

 ing behind a bush and dropping a kicking 

 bluebottle over the nose of a feeding trout 

 is a piece of strategy with a meanness 

 about it. Men who cannot fill their baskets 

 otherwise may resort to contrivances per- 

 missible in the early ages of the art, but 

 surely they should be forbidden to those who 

 aspire to win professorial degrees in it. And 

 touching the question of artificial fliel>, we be- 

 lieve with a shrewd Scotchman, that, although 

 the fish regard them as food of some sort, they 

 never mistake them for the particular creature 

 they are intended to imitate. An immense 

 amount of rubbish has been written on this 

 point. You frequently read of a typical 



