n8 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



hot orange silk dubbed with fine pig's wool or seal's fur of 

 red-ant colour — a deep rich mahogany red — ribbed with 

 fine gold wire and hackled with a rusty dun cock's hackle, 

 sharp and bright, and with whisks of three fibres of a 

 honey-dun cock's shoulder hackle, it proves extraordinarily 

 attractive at the time when small spinners come on the 

 water, and according to my experience it fishes as well 

 slightly submerged as floating. Dressed on No. i or even 

 No. 2 hook it is an excellent representation of the male 

 spinner of the blue-winged olive. No angler should be 

 without it at the appropriate season of the year. 



7. THE POPE AND THE TAILERS. 



Through the bogland of a marshy little Berkshire valley, 

 one of the most delightfully trouty of brooks known to me 

 cuts its way in such wise that though to reach it one has to 

 wade painfully through mud or to stagger from insecure 

 tussock to tussock equally insecure, yet when one gets to the 

 channel one finds underfoot clean hard pan, except where 

 the current has so silted up fine, sharp silver sand as to give 

 the river- weed foothold to grow luxuriantly. The stock of 

 trout is enormous, and but for the fact that they maintain 

 fine condition one would say excessive; for they are so 

 numerous that to scare one means to disturb quite a 

 stretch of water, and to set the trout bolting in all direc- 

 tions. And they are easily scared, for the water is seldom 

 knee-deep, often only ankle-deep, and averages, perhaps, 

 a foot. One would think the business of catching these 

 wary fish with a fly a hopeless one if you did not happen 

 to be by the water-side at the time of the take. Then 

 these trout, having once settled down to feeding, though 

 they still require adroit and careful fishing, are at length 

 approachable, and take a fly, dry or wet, presented 

 secundum artem with gratifying freedom. There are in- 



