UPSTREAM WIND 95 



The duns were coming down in quite fair quantity for 

 the time of year; but, in the strong breeze, they were 

 skidding and skating about on the surface, and even being 

 blown upstream, so that the trout could not depend on 

 their coming down to them quietly and evenly; and 

 presently I noticed that these flies were not being taken, 

 but only the disabled flies which were blown on to the 

 water, and had one or both wings caught. I found, too, 

 that my next fish would have nothing to do with my fly 

 floating cocked and well dried; but he had it immediately 

 it was offered semi- submerged. Acting on this tip, I laid 

 siege to some three other trout in the next couple of hundred 

 yards. I cannot claim any merit. It was a duffer's day. 

 I had the right fly, and the wind took it into the mouths 

 of the trout. Anyhow I got the lot, and by one o'clock 

 the strap across my chest began to feel uncomfortably tight. 



I was still some way from the luncheon hut, and I 

 occupied the next hour in fishing up to it. But after 

 one o'clock there was a change in the humour of the fish, 

 for though they came up readily enough to the same fly, 

 and were apparently taking the natural fly as well as ever, 

 not one would take soundly, and I lost five, each after a 

 brief run. Then they stopped for the day. I waited in 

 the meadows till four o'clock on the chance of an after- 

 noon rise, but none came on. So well content I conveyed 

 my three and a half brace, of which the first was the smallest, 

 back to my inn, and indited a postcard to " Fleur-de-Lys," 

 because I thought it would gratify him to know what he 

 had missed. 



It is perhaps only fair to say that the following day 

 spring set in again with all its arctic severity. There was 

 an icy wind from the west, about a dozen flies seen on 

 the water all day, one fish observed to rise three times — 

 once at me, short — and a toom creel for the writer. 



