174 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



Wednesday the sun set at 7 and the growing moon at 

 8.28. On that evening I set out to negotiate a noble 

 two-pounder which inhabited a deep hole in a little bay 

 in the shadow of a spinney and thoroughly protected from 

 the moonlight by a combination of tree shelter and tussock. 

 My plan was to take my stand in the shadow of the spinney 

 and to switch a small Rusty Spinner across to the bay. 

 The fish thereabouts had already begun to move when I 

 got down to the spinney after dinner, and I thought my 

 big friend had moved up a yard or so and was feeding 

 carefully at the top of his hole. 



I was wrong, for as my spinner was taken, and my fish 

 went off down-stream with a slam, there was a huge boil 

 as the two-pounder flounced off the exact spot where I 

 had expected to find him. When the other fish — one pound 

 nine ounces — was ashore, I decided not to wait for the 

 return of the fugitive, so I got the keeper to put me across 

 at the bottom of the stretch above described. It was then 

 seven o'clock, and the sun just down. I found a few fish 

 feeding cautiously, yet fairly freely. Yet every time I 

 reached a fish and put my spinner over him he stopped 

 at the second, if not at the first, cast. The moon, grown 

 since overnight, was behind me, and if it was not the 

 moonlight that made the trout conscious that all was not 

 right, I cannot guess what it was. By 7.15 the rise was 

 all over, and it set me speculating whether the moonlight 

 had any effect in expediting the evening rise. I did not 

 get another fish, and I turned in before the moon went 

 down. 



The following evening the sun went down at 6.59 and 

 the moon at 8.55. Again I tried the same bank, again 

 I found the evening rise beginning even before the sun 

 went down. Taking the cue from the spinners I had 

 found in the maw of the overnight trout, I had dressed 



