212 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER 



succeed. Until moved by a desire for surface food, 

 the trout is not to be drawn from the depths of the 

 water by any artificial fly no matter how seductive. 

 It does occasionally happen that the substitution of a 

 fresh cast for that the angler has been fruitlessly 

 employing is followed immediately by a stir among the 

 fish, but the relation between the two is not necessarily 

 that of cause and effect ; on the contrary, they may be 

 entirely unrelated and their concurrence accidental. 

 The angler's tardy success is not due to the superior 

 fascination of the new fly, but to the fact that he has, 

 by the merest chance, discarded the old at a moment 

 coincident with the beginning of a rise. The trout 

 he takes would have been taken in any case; they 

 became disposed to feed, and would have accepted the 

 ineffective flies just as readily as those to which they 

 have succumbed. Things are seldom what they seem, 

 and the cautious angler does not jump to a conclusion ; 

 he is slow to assume that the obvious is certainly 

 the true. 



The practice of staining gut might be discontinued 

 without prejudice to the success of the angler. Since 

 the material of which the cast consists is — when good — 

 transparent and colourless, it is probably more gener- 

 ally useful in its natural condition than when coloured 



