TACTICAL 173 



or spinney, or a high bank cuts off the sunlight sooner, one 

 may hope to find a trout or two beginning earlier than 

 where the banks are open. This suggests that where the 

 fly is on the water the time of the take is dictated by 

 conditions of light. Generally, no doubt, the fall of spinner 

 on the water closely coincides with the change in tempera- 

 ture which comes where the sun gets off the water; but 

 the hatch of duns, which often comes about sooner, may 

 be expedited or retarded by little-understood conditions. 



On the occasion under consideration the sunset hour, 

 according to Whitaker, was 7.4 p.m., Greenwich time, 

 and the moon was in her first quarter, and timed 

 to set at 7.58 p.m. By the time, therefore, that the 

 sun was off the water on the first evening the three- 

 day-old moon was getting down in the sky towards 

 a setting almost straight down-stream. It was, how- 

 ever, quite bright. The bend of the river which I 

 selected was sheltered by a high bank and a spinney, 

 and soon after sunset a fish or two began to move, but 

 they were invariably oncers, and it was not till the moon 

 was right down and off the water that the trout began to 

 rise freely and to be held, and there was only time for a 

 brace. That was on the Monday. On the Tuesday the sun 

 set at 7.2 and the moon 8.8. On getting to the river 

 I went farther down-stream for my after-dinner start, 

 and got the keeper to put me across to the eastern bank 

 at the bottom of a stretch where the stream ran deep on 

 that side, a beat which experience told me held the best 

 fish within the limits of my leave. The moon was low, 

 but again bright, and right behind my rod. The fish were 

 rising before the sun was quite off the water, and though at 

 a distance they seemed to be feeding heartily, no sooner 

 did one deliver the first cast than they stopped, and I had 

 to go home content with my bag of the day. On the 



