VI 

 TACTICAL 



GLIMPSES OF THE MOON. 



Many anglers have no doubt been driven to consider the 

 effect of the moon on rising trout and grayling, but the 

 moon being a lady of habits which, though regular, bear a 

 different relation to each successive evening, and the even- 

 ing rise being itself a thing of infinite variety, the study 

 of the effects of moonlight on angling results has perhaps 

 received rather less than its due. I thought myself lucky, 

 therefore, in that during a holiday on the Itchen of the last 

 week in August, 1914, I had a little moonlight on this 

 interesting subject. The general trend of the stretch of 

 the river which it was my privilege to fish is from north 

 to south, with some lengths almost directly so, and in the 

 main with few exaggerated zigzags. It thus happened that 

 a moon showing a little east of south, even after sunset, 

 was generally behind my hand on most of the lengths which 

 it was open to me to select, and on only one short hundred 

 yards was it open to me to cast across from north-east to 

 south-west more or less into the shadow of the opposite 

 bank. Each successive evening the wind fell in such sort 

 as to give hopes of a good evening rise, and the time of 

 year was not too late for a good hatch of the blue-winged 

 olive. 



As a rule the dipping of the sun's upper rim marks the 

 beginning of the evening rise, and where a thick coppice, 



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