164 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER 



stinately refuse to consider the fly. The surface of the 

 loch, cheerless and bleak, is a lifeless waste on which 

 the angler casts his lure in vain. He may persevere 

 for hours with a perseverance worthy of a more hope- 

 ful cause, may change his flies again and again, may 

 resort to every artifice he knows, but his labour wins 

 no recompense. In the circumstances, the stream 

 yields him just as little profit. A chill, squally, vari- 

 able wind is the pet aversion of the Highland gillie. 

 "I don't," he groans, "like thae black squaals on the 

 waater ; we'll no get a fesh the day," and his evil 

 prognostications are invariably fulfilled. Well, not 

 perhaps invariably ; if even on such days the trout 

 were not occasionally disposed to approach the surface, 

 the angler would know that in, at least, one variety of 

 weather he might spare himself the unnecessary trouble 

 of putting up his rod. What it is that, under the con- 

 ditions I have indicated, prevents the fish from rising, 

 I cannot tell. It is not the cold, for I have taken trout 

 when the temperature was below freezing point and 

 ice covered the shallow water by the margin of the 

 loch ; nor, since sport is often lively in a gale, is it that 

 the gusty wind blows the flies from off the surface. 

 We should, possibly, seek the cause of the trout's in- 



