EPISODICAL 233 



should be inclined to think I had monopolized more than 

 my due proportion during August and September. 



The first occasion was a Saturday early in August. 

 The rise began tentatively about 10.15 a.m., soon after 

 my arrival on the water. The first fish seen to rise was 

 cruising for position, and whether he was scared or not 

 he was soon lost; but, while he was being cast to, a 

 bumping big trout flung himself out of the water about 

 one hundred and fifty yards higher upstream, and fell 

 back with a resounding splash. " I wish I had that 

 chap on my fly," was in my mind. No other fish putting 

 up in the interval, the one hundred and fifty yards were 

 slowly passed by, and about eleven o'clock the place 

 where the big fish had broken water was reached. There 

 he stood poised in midstream about two feet down over 

 a deep hole or pocket, at a point where a certain narrowing 

 of the stream concentrated the current towards the middle. 

 He was not rising, nor was it apparent that he was feeding ; 

 but he looked willing to feed. Accordingly a wet Pale 

 Greenwell, and subsequently a wet Pale Watery dun, were 

 successively submitted to his attention, and were allowed 

 by him to pass without notice. Then a fair fish rose thirty 

 or forty yards farther up, and I moved on to him, and 

 was just netting him out when I became aware of a 

 rise twice repeated at the point where the big fish had 

 lain. A wide circuit into the meadow brought the nine- 

 footer behind the trout. He was taking with a head- 

 and-tail porpoise-roll sort of rise, and I diagnosed the 

 fly as spent spinner. I quickly changed my wet Pale 

 Watery for a small, floating Tup's Indispensable. The 

 trout continued to rise, not frequently, but steadily. As 

 the Tup lit a foot or so above him and a little to the left, 

 he took another fly with a head-and-tail rise, and then 

 reached for the Tup. . . . Two pounds two ounces. 



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