BEFORE DAYLIGHT. 255 



without moving position. It is an easy matter in still 

 weather to whip every inch of a circle of a hundred and 

 fifty feet diameter. 



The fisherman who tries the water of a new lake, un- 

 certain whether there be any trout in it, should, if possible, 

 cast at evening near an inlet. He will often find the 

 largest trout in water not over six inches deep. It is 

 probable that at this hour of the day the large trout are 

 on the feed, and seek near the inlet the smaller fish as 

 well as insects. I remember an evening in Northern New 

 Hampshire, when Dupont and myself took twenty-seven 

 trout between sunset and an hour after dark, every one 

 of which weighed over two pounds, and every one took 

 the fly in water about ten inches deep. There was a 

 brilliant full moon that night, and they rose later than 

 usual. An old Adirondack guide has frequently told me 

 that in those waters large trout rise freely to the fly be- 

 tween one and three o'clock in the morning. I have 

 never been able to verify his saying, for I have never loved 

 fishing well enough to toil all night at it as did the apos- 

 tles, nor to get out of bed very long before day. I have, 

 however, not infrequently cast for a half-hour before the 

 dawn on water where trout were abundant, and I never 

 got a rise until day was fairly shining. But I am not 

 willing to place my limited experience against the asser- 

 tion of the guide, backed as it was by the statement of 

 sportsmen that they had known him to go out of camp at 

 midnight and return before daylight with a load of trout. 

 In some of the streams of the Pacific coast I have been 

 told trout are taken with bait at all hours of the night in 

 streams where one is seldom taken in daylight. All this 

 goes to the question whether fish sleep, a question not yet 

 satisfactorily answered. 



