JUNE 135 



may bring down to them. There, if anywhere, may 

 rising trout be marked and business done with some 

 of the whoppers that seldom come abroad in the day- 

 time under normal circumstances. 



LII 



In this blessed land of freedom one is permitted to 

 entertain and proclaim opinions of every degree of 

 latitude on any conceivable subject. That Fi Shin g with 

 is a great privilege, no doubt: but a still Miaao* 

 greater is that nobody is compelled to listen to, still 

 less to agree with, the opinions of anybody else. I am 

 transgressing no law, therefore, in affirming that the 

 only sportsmanlike way of taking trout is with the 

 artificial fly, although that will be reckoned rank heresy 

 by those who own Izaak Walton as the only true head. 

 Mr. Andrew Lang, in editing one of the hundred and 

 odd editions of the Compleat Angler, was the first to 

 point out that Izaak was no fly-fisher. It is true that 

 he gives a jury of twelve flies, with directions how to 

 tie them ; but these were cribbed sans phrase from an 

 earlier authority, Mr. Barker. Walton himself had his 

 limitations : he had heard of, but never seen, the use of 

 a reel, and he relied for his diversion on ' the cork or 

 trembling quill.' Bottom-fishing with a float for trout 

 can have but few advocates now, though I have known 

 it resorted to in a loch, not without success, when the 

 fish were ' dour ' ; but minnow-fishing, unhappily, is far 

 too prevalent, especially in Scotland. It is one of those 

 acts of which a man may say with the Apostle that all 



