58 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



that esoteric few who practise the utmost refine- 

 ments. 



To come at last to my subject. I seem to 

 discover seven separate degrees of dry-fly [angling. 

 The lowest fisherman of this kind is the man who 

 is absolutely learning his art. He is content 

 with little results. A single fish is ample reward 

 for a day's toil. A couple of brace sets him quite 

 above himself, and he boasts all winter of a two- 

 pounder. He carries a steelyard in his pocket, 

 and to its test (that every ounce may tell) he 

 submits every fish instantly on its being taken. 

 He spends more than he can afford on the charm- 

 ing little japanned boxes which the tackle-makers 

 sell. He has many hundreds of flies, and presents 

 each pattern patiently to each rising trout until the 

 list, or the fish, becomes exhausted. This tactless 

 fool asks his masters to let him see the fishes they 

 have caught. He cannot understand their reasons 

 for returning them. A fish to him is a fish, and 

 he is not nice in the matter of its colour, rotundity, 

 or sex. The ideal of three brace of eighteen-inch 

 males would never present itself to his mind. He 

 is not aesthetic at all. 



A little higher in the scale is the ordinary angler, 

 such as I am ; the man who can take a trout now 

 and then when things are going right ; who feels a 

 certain reluctance to kill fishes that are not in the 



