THE RISE 57 



places watched by anglers. And it will often be found that, 

 even when there is no rise of fly, a small Sedge fly floated 

 over such a place will bring up a trout which, perhaps for 

 fear of being displaced by a rival, is hanging on to his 

 place of vantage. 



But, alike in chalk streams and in other streams, there 

 are slow lengths where the surface food does not come 

 rapidly enough to permit of a fish waiting for it. In these, 

 therefore, he will be cruising, either at the surface or in mid- 

 water or deep, with an upward eye on the surface and the 

 intervening water. If he be cruising at the surface he 

 will sip the fly gently with a minimum of effort. If, how- 

 ever, he be lying at mid-water or deep and comes up to 

 the fly, he will do so with a slash or a" strike," as if he 

 feared to be intercepted by a rival; but he will gather 

 most of his food in mid- water or at bottom. In these 

 conditions it may well be understood that a big fly of a 

 beetle type, well sunk and drawn slowly or in short darts, 

 may often prove far more attractive than a floater. The 

 Ramsbury water on the upper Kennet, rented for a term 

 by Mr. F. M. Halford and his friends, is in its lower lengths, 

 at any rate above the Mill (locally called "pounds"), 

 nearly all of the mill-head character, and that no doubt 

 accounts for the failure of the most able management, 

 in spite of lavish expenditure on stocking and on destruc- 

 tion of enemies, to convert it into a free-rising water. It 

 may therefore be judged that such waters present a legiti- 

 mate case, not only for the wet fly, but for a dragging wet fly. 



It is the stream of moderate pace and comparatively 

 even flow, therefore, that is suitable for the dry fly. The 

 upstream wet fly fished without drag is suitable to that 

 type and to faster and rougher streams, and the dragging 

 wet fly may be used at both ends of the scale. 



My lake-fishing experience has been so slight as to 



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