SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS 149 



case than the other, and with an added chance of sport 

 by a method no whit less difficult or fascinating than 

 the dry fly. 



THE CULTIVATION OF SHYNESS. 



There are two kinds of shyness in trout — man-shyness, 

 which is the prerogative and part of the charm of the wild 

 fish, and gut-shyness, which is sheer sophistication. Man- 

 shyness is instinctive, but cases must be within the observa- 

 tion of every angler in which trout whose haunt is near 

 some stream of traffic of mankind, and whose food must be 

 taken under man's observation or not at all, get over it to 

 a surprising extent, and feed as readily under the eye of 

 the passer-by as if he were not present. The shyness of the 

 fish that is hammered by anglers is another kind of shyness. 

 It has two stages. The first is where he stops feeding when 

 cast to, the last is when he does not; and the last stage is 

 worse than the first, for it combines the wariness of the 

 first stage with the elimination of man-shyness, and the 

 contempt for his lures that is born of knowledge. 



This is the stage in which the trout of the Old Barge at 

 Winchester, so feelingly described by Viscount Grey in his 

 chapters on his schooldays at Winchester, must un- 

 doubtedly have been when the most successful tactics were 

 to cover the rising fish time after time with the greatest 

 possible rapidity in the hope that, sooner or later, he would 

 make a mistake. It is perhaps impossible to hope that there 

 will not continue to be hard-fished public or club waters 

 in which these conditions prevail, but of the undesirableness 

 of such conditions there can be no question. Nor can there 

 be doubt of the cause. It is over-fishing or hammering, 

 and it is a condition only conspicuous, I think, on waters 

 known as dry-fly waters. That dry-fly fishing should make 

 trout more gut-shy than wet-fly fishing seems probable 



