66 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



apparently getting, and certainly missing, rise after rise, 

 he may suspect that what he is really getting is this kind 

 of false rise, and he should, if possible, seek a position 

 where the light falls so as to enable him to see through 

 the surface the turn of the fish under water, and strike at 

 that instead of at the following surface indication. 



How fallacious that indication can be I saw very clearly 

 one sunny June morning a few years back on the Kennet. 

 I had put my rod together for a day's May-fly fishing on 

 a beautiful length of that river, and I was waiting on a 

 bridge above which a lovely clear shallow deepened and 

 narrowed towards the arch. In the eye of the stream — a 

 nice eighteen or twenty yard cast upstream — a yellow trout 

 of near two pounds, and obviously in prime condition, 

 lay rather deep, yet not in that glued-to-the-bottom way 

 which rendered it hopeless to attempt to get him. There 

 was, in fact, an air of suppressed energy and eagerness 

 about him which tempted me to stretch over him the 

 summer duck straddlebug which was ready attached to 

 my cast. The fly lit beyond him, but a yard or more too 

 much to the left. But he came at it with a flash, took 

 a scare, turned, and was gone — three or more yards to the 

 right of his original position; and as he came into the 

 straight, all that way away, a huge boil on the surface 

 surrounded and took under my fly. It was the effect of 

 the vigorous slash he made in his turn away from the fly 

 that only materialized on the surface when the trout was 

 well away from it. It was obviously no good to strike, 

 but if the light conditions had not enabled me to see the 

 whole process quite clearly, I might have struck under the 

 impression that I had had a fine rise, and have gone in the 

 belief that the fish had risen " short," or that I had mis- 

 timed my stroke — and have found any explanation but 

 the true one. 



