CHAPTER XIII 



A Great Hatch of Fly 



The biggest hatch of fly I ever recollect 

 seeing was on a misty day, with an overcast 

 sky, in May 1892. The place was the 

 Rutland length of the Derbyshire Wye, and 

 the time the early afternoon. The olive dun 

 came on in vast quantities. It floated down 

 the stream, not in companies of half a dozen, 

 such as one often sees when there is a good 

 hatch of fly, but in companies of half a 

 hundred or so. All our favourite backwaters 

 were covered with the fly a quarter of an hour 

 or twenty minutes after the hatch had com- 

 menced. It came not indeed 'single spies, 

 but in battalions.' The trout and the gray- 

 ling went mad, and remained so for an hour 

 or an hour and a-half. In backwaters and 



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