158 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



For many years, as many as I can remember during my 

 angling life, I have heard it laid down as the one certain 

 thing in the uncertain sport of fly fishing that with a 

 wind there could be no evening rise. Like a fool, I be- 

 lieved it without testing it, and many an afternoon have 

 I waited in anxiety for the drop of the breeze at sunset, 

 and when the drop has not arrived I have unshipped 

 my rod and turned my steps in disappointment home- 

 along. 



It was only in 1916 that, accident having kept me on the 

 river awaiting the return of a friend long after sundown 

 on a gusty June evening, I found that the true proposition 

 probably is that there is no rise to a mere spinner-fall on 

 open water on a gusty evening. But if there be a hatch of 

 fly on a windy evening — and there is no obvious reason 

 why a night-hatching fly should not come out on a rough 

 evening, if a day-hatching fly can come out on a rough 

 morning or afternoon — it should be just as possible to get 

 sport as on a gusty morning. 



It enrages me to think of all the good evenings' fishing 

 I have missed through believing the pundits. The moral 

 is, " Never believe a thing you are told about fishing until 

 you have proved it, not only once, but over and over 

 again." 



The evening I refer to gave me three and a half brace 

 above the average weight for the water, and is recorded at 

 p. 205. The blue- winged olive was coming up well; I could 

 tell it by the big splurgy rises of the trout. Saturday, 

 June 23, 1 91 7, was just such another evening. I had been 

 down to look at the water between my arrival at four o'clock 

 (summer time) and an early dinner, and I had spotted the 

 blue-winged olive — the first of the season, the keeper said 

 — and had caught a brace with an imitation of the nymph, 

 but they were smallish fish, and I returned them. 



