TACTICAL 175 



some bright Orange Red spinners, and with one of these 

 in a somewhat sheltered bay I got a trout of just two pounds 

 with a first cast that pitched almost on his nose, and gave 

 him no time to think. But apart from that my experience 

 was a replica of that of the previous evening. I would 

 have tried fishing into rises in the black shadows under 

 the opposite bank if I could have got to a place with a 

 bank sheltering the water from the moon, but the only 

 bend that answered that description was a haunt of grayling, 

 and I was out for trout. 



The following evening the sunset was at 6.56, and the 

 moon was timed to go down at 9.24. This was perhaps 

 the most hopeless evening of the lot. The trout were as 

 nervous as on a day of milk-and-watery glare, and if I 

 had not had the first-mentioned two-pounder (sixteen 

 inches and two pounds two ounces), taken in the morning 

 on a Whitchurch dun in the hole from which he bolted on 

 the Wednesday night, to console me, I should have knocked 

 off in a poor humour with myself. It had been a bright, 

 glaring day with an easterly trend in the air, and the trout 

 had been nymphing all day, and may have been gorged to 

 repletion. Still the rises ere I approached showed that 

 they had not quite done. 



As it was, I was inclined to kick myself for not applying 

 during the week a lesson got some years back on a water 

 which ran from east to west, so that an angler fishing the 

 evening rise upstream always had the sunset glow behind 

 him. There I found the trout almost unapproachable 

 from behind; but, curiously enough, they accepted most 

 confidingly a fly floated down to them. Probably I ought 

 to have begun at the other end of my stretch and to have 

 drifted my spinner down to my fish, and who knows but 

 what I might have had a hefty bag to bring in. That east 

 and west stretch, by the way, is remarkable in that a 



