TACTICAL 179 



fly upon the sedge, and my attempt to recover it put the 

 trout definitely down. 



This, however, is irrelevant, the point of this narrative 

 being that a soundly hooked trout, howbeit big and power- 

 ful, need not be allowed his own way if it be inconvenient 

 for the angler to let him go down; and that, by judicious 

 application of strain in the right direction, he may be 

 persuaded that he is fighting you more successfully by 

 boring upstream at tremendous expense of energy. The 

 time to knock it into his head that he is wrong is when 

 he is in the landing-net. 



One Sunday afternoon some days later at the Fly-Fishers' 

 Club I had a conversation with a guest of another 

 member which threw some light upon this episode. I 

 cannot give his name, so as to give him the credit due to 

 him, for I do not recall it, nor do I recall whose guest he 

 was. I hope, whoever he was, he will forgive me for 

 putting about his theory with this inadequate acknow- 

 ledgment. 



The conversation led up to my recounting this episode. 

 Of course, I had realized that I was applying side-strain to 

 bring the fish round, but it was the guest who explained 

 why side-strain was so immediately effective when no 

 strain in any other direction would have availed to stop the 

 fish. " You see," he said, " the trout swims with a lateral 

 action, moving his head from side to side, and if, as he 

 goes down-stream, you pull his head round hard sideways, 

 half the time he must be yielding to the strain, and that 

 makes it so hard as to be almost impossible for him to 

 fight against it the other half of the time. So he comes 

 round. If you applied the same amount of strain overhead 

 it would only tend to lift him, and would have nothing 

 like the same effect in stopping or turning him." 



Very simple and obvious when put that way. Of course, 



