230 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



but it was so overgrown with bunches of serried flags that, 

 in order to cast over them to the little runs between the 

 flag masses, it was necessary for me to regain the bank, 

 here fortunately open enough for the purpose though 

 packed with wild herbage and in places showing a couple 

 of yards of black mud left by the stream between the 

 water and sound footing. There was hazel and alder 

 behind, near enough to keep one guessing, and it was 

 easy to be hung up, and what with the overgrowth on the 

 banks and the overgrowth in the water one began to 

 wonder how it was possible either to hook a trout or to 

 land him if one did so. For the sake of the bigger hook, 

 I changed my Spinner for the discarded No. I Red Sedge 

 with hare's-ear body, and looked about me. Presently I 

 became aware of a trout lying under the opposite bank 

 beneath a hazel bough and against a small pile of brambles, 

 with three broad bands of well-grown flags between him 

 and the black mud and dead brown flags at my feet. I 

 do not pretend to have conceived a plan for extracting 

 that trout if I hooked him, but he looked so nice a fish 

 for the stream that I could not leave him untried, and, 

 after several essays and several times pulling my hook 

 through the leaf of a flag, I dropped my fly on his tail. He 

 turned and took it at once, and I kept his head down-stream 

 away from the brambles till a chance came a few yards 

 down of steering him out of the farthest run into the next. 

 Up this he bolted, and with a shortened line I pulled him 

 through a weak place in the next regiment of flags, and 

 with a little more manoeuvring got him through the next, 

 when I found myself able to lift his chin on to the edge 

 of the black mud and to bring him slithering on to it. 

 Then the hook came away just in reach of the rim of my 

 long-handled landing-net, but too far away for me to get 

 it under him. But as I touched him with it he kicked and 

 fell upon the mesh, and presently was laid alongside his 



