24 MOSTLY ABOUT TROUT 



spots were scarlet, of the scarlet of poppies, 

 rimmed with white and set off with other spots 

 of black. It was my very own. 



That was a wonderful day with the trout ; 

 in fifty years I have never known another like 

 it. Nothing seemed to put them down, and 

 nearly every one of them took the same fly, 

 a yellowish-green silk body and a soft grey 

 hackle, with no wings. I put one up as a 

 dropper and one as the tail-fly, with a coch-y- 

 bondhu as the other dropper, and during the 

 day, my first day's fly-fishing, in a clear stream, 

 I caught 6| Ib. weight of sturdy little trout, 

 mostly from four to six ounces, but one or two 

 much larger. I should say that one of them 

 weighed ten or twelve ounces, or thereabouts, 

 and nearly all of them came out of one tiny 

 little pool and about fifteen yards of the stream 

 above. Once I had two on at a time. The 

 droppers were fastened to the cast with one- 

 inch loops of thick gut that would send the 

 trout of these days away full speed to their 

 weed-shelters, and I must confess that I cannot 

 claim to have caught my first trout he in- 

 sisted upon catching himself. There was one 

 that day that did not. Something took hold 

 deep under water, and to my dismay I seemed 

 to have no control over its movements. In a 



