220 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



runs off from the main river on the east, and after a straight 

 course of some two hundred and fifty yards or so, during 

 which it receives the contributions of innumerable ditches, 

 bends at right angles just above the culvert which carries 

 the farm road that leads across the meadows from Abbot's 

 Hyde back to the main river. 



Duns are seldom seen in any quantity on this carrier, 

 and as a consequence such few trout as it from time to 

 time contains, though generally fat and lusty, are more 

 amenable to the persuasions of a fair-sized fly than are 

 the dun-fed beauties of the river proper. They have, 

 moreover, no set feeding times, and there is always a 

 chance with one of them, provided the approach be made 

 with becoming reverence. The best, perhaps, of my ex- 

 periences under the older conditions was one August 

 Saturday afternoon, somewhere about 1905. The year 

 was distinguished by exceptional flights of large dusky 

 ants; and one day in London I caught a few that were 

 running on the stucco of a friend's gateway, and when I 

 got home I dressed an imitation in pig's-wool. The three 

 or four patterns I turned out were rough, uncouth-looking 

 objects — two blobs of rusty dun pig's-wool with a waist 

 between — the blobs trimmed into some semblance of 

 roundness by means of curved scissors. There was a 

 sparse but stiff short hackle turned twice behind the upper 

 blob. 



The following Saturday I reached the keeper's some- 

 where about 2 p.m., and donning waders, etc., I made my 

 way, rod in hand, across the meadows by the farm road. 

 Approaching the second culvert I became aware of a buzz 

 of insects hovering over it, and was delighted to find my 

 friends, the big dusky ants, in force ; still more delighted to 

 see that within thirty yards below the culvert were no less 

 than three good trout busy with the ants in three successive 



