190 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



room whatever for casting across by reason of the trees 

 and bushes behind the angler, or for casting upstream by 

 reason of the frequency of overhanging boughs. It follows 

 as a natural corollary that the trout rise rather unusually 

 freely under the big overgrown tussocks which fringe the 

 opposite bank. From their own side these fish are almost 

 unapproachable; and, though I have occasionally caught 

 one from that side, it has been the exception rather than 

 the rule, and I have far oftener been irritated by their 

 promptitude in stopping directly my rod-tip appeared over 

 the screen of tussocks, and by being hung up in those 

 tussocks every third or fourth cast. Until my German 

 visit, I had often looked longingly at those trout from the 

 spinney side, but I had either gone back to attempt them, 

 without much hope and with less success, from their own 

 side, or had reluctantly moved on and given them a 

 miss. 



But one evening in the July following my German 

 experience I was going down-stream through the spinney, 

 to wait lower down for the evening rise to begin, when I 

 heard a sound under the opposite bank, and saw a small, 

 soft ring begin to spread. I looked again longingly, and 

 twice the same thing happened. I tied on a Jenny spinner, 

 oiled it carefully, and, drawing line off the reel, switched 

 it out towards the rise. Each cast came nearer, and about 

 the fourth or fifth cast the fly lit beautifully softly, just 

 above where the fish had risen, and floated two inches or 

 three inches under the opposite bank. Then it became 

 submerged, and simultaneously I was playing my trout. 

 Twice again in the same season I visited the spinney. On 

 the first occasion I found six fish rising, and switched over 

 to them. I pricked and turned over one and landed all 

 the other five, one being not quite sizable. On the second 

 occasion I killed a brace in the afternoon — the only brace 



