FLY FISHING FOR TROUT AND GRAYLING. 271 



It was a hot forenoon in August, one of those tantalising days 



when, 



Instead of one unchanging breeze 

 There blow a thousand little airs, 



and I soon perceived that there was little profit in hunting the 

 ' catspaws ' which supplied the needful ripple — if you could 

 only catch them. So I induced my friends to land me some 

 three miles from the shepherd's hut at the end of the loch 

 where we were to find our luncheon. I was equipped for 

 wading, and had before me several reaches of fine gravel 

 where the water deepened very gradually towards the ' broo ' — 

 that critical point, where, in this as in many other lakes, the 

 shoreward shallow rapidly shelves away into water too deep for 

 the fly. In fact it often happens that at this point a belt of 

 water from ten to twenty yards in breadth contains all the best 

 of the taking fish. Within this belt are mostly small fry, with- 

 out it lies the deep, only fit for trolling. The water before me 

 was smooth as glass, the bottom delightful for wading. Moving 

 cautiously to make the warning wave which must precede me as 

 small as possible, I advanced into the lake as far as I could, and 

 as I did so became more and more aware that fish were moving 

 just where the water deepened within a long cast of my two- 

 handed rod. I threw but one fly, and that smaller than the 

 size I usually preferred. Throwing as far as I could, I let my 

 whole cast sink before giving any movement to the fly, and 

 was repeatedly rewarded by finding that a trout had hooked 

 himself a foot or so under water. Every now and then, how- 

 ever, the fly dropped so close before the nose of a feeding fish 

 that he was fast on the instant. Briefly, when we met at our tryst 

 (where I confess to have been half an hour late) my friends had 

 three fish between them, whilst I had six-and-thirty. In this 

 case it will be seen the secret of success lay in keeping low, so 

 that the efiect of refraction kept the unimmersed portion of the 

 fly fisher's figure practically out of sight. 



My next illustration shall be one out of a thousand memories 

 of the famous Dritfield beck. It was a July day some forty 



