"MY ENEMY' 141 



nose come up he took my fly again with 

 confidence. Again he made the same mad rush, 

 followed by a jump, and again he broke me. 

 These were the opening combats of the war, 

 and in both of them I had failed. 



Then came many weeks of prolonged and 

 patient warfare. I could only get away in 

 the evenings, generally about twice a week. 

 There was always a hatch of fly soon after 

 sundown, and I could make sure that he would 

 then be feeding. During the summer months 

 I must have spent on an average at least an 

 hour and a half in every week trying to induce 

 him to take my fly again. Out would come 

 his nose every few minutes, sometimes two 

 or three times a minute, but always to take 

 the natural flies, which I had done my best to 

 copy in the pattern selected. He would take 

 them freely and frequently, without, as far 

 as I could tell, even glancing at my copy, which 

 constantly passed within an inch of the spot 

 where his nose was appearing (it was a very 

 easy cast, right-handed, from a point below 

 him, a nice strong flow to carry the fly down, 

 and not a vestige of " drag "). So the weeks 

 went by. Then, one day in September, near 

 the end of the season, I broke my landing- 

 net in trying to bend down a bough of a tree 



