140 I GO A-FISHING. 



early as this, and consequently we've been thinking al- 

 ways that trout wouldn't rise to a fly till June. Live and 

 learn !" 



John, however, was right to this extent, that until the 

 trout get to feeding on flies they do not rise so freely as 

 later in the season, and large fish seldom rise in the early 

 spring ; and they do not congregate at the mouths of 

 brooks, but seem to be scattered and more difficult to 

 find in large lakes until the water grows warmer. In a 

 week's fishing, among several hundred trout that we took, 

 none were very much over a pound in weight, and the 

 major portion were smaller fish. We threw back many 

 quarter-pound fish, reserving only a few of the small ones, 

 because I esteem them for table use as vastly better than 

 larger ones. 



We whiled away the afternoon on the rock and on Isl- 

 and Point across the lake near the house. In the bay, off 

 the mouth of the swamp brook, where in August in old 

 times I have killed many a three-pounder, I could not get 

 a rise. The trout approach the cold brooks later in the 

 season, when the lake water begins to get warm. I note 

 this fact, that nearly every trout which I took on this aft- 

 ernoon rose to a bright green fly unlike any American in- 

 sect that I know of, and which I used because it happened 

 to be on an old leader that had never been dismantled 

 since I killed trout with it on Loch Katrine. There were 

 no flies on the water, and it was so cold that night that 

 the ice froze like a pane of glass over small ponds. 



We sat by the fire in the evening, and I told Dupont 

 stories of the old times in those regions, which seem to 

 have passed out of the memory of the present generation. 



And then we talked of far lands where we two had 

 wandered together for it was only a little more than 



