FLY FISHING FOR TROUT AND GRAYLING. 275 



pasture land, you must tread softly and cautiously. A heavy or 

 hasty footfall will be felt by the fish under the near bank, who will 

 rush out and spread alarm among their friends in mid-stream. 



I remember finding myself in a ridiculous fix in some pasture 

 land of the ' crumbHng ' character along the Leintwardine club 

 water. The favourite dog of a friend, who was busy with his 

 hammer among the neighbouring strata of old red sandstone, 

 deserted his master's company for mine, having found, as I verily 

 believe, trout more amusing than trilobites. Unluckily there were 

 sundry cattle about — hideous white-faced Herefords — who kept 

 charging after poor Crab, and driving him to my feet for refuge. 

 They always stopped within a few yards of me, but their tramp- 

 ling had a visible effect on the trout whom I wished to circum- 

 vent. There was a general hurry-skurry over the shallows. I 

 might as well have been casting from the deck of that bite noire 

 of Thames anglers, a steam launch. I felt, like the legendary 

 Cambridge Don when Fraic Professorinn presented him with 

 twins, that ' I must put a stop to this.' So I hardened my 

 heart, filled my pocket with pebbles, and pelted poor Crab till 

 he found he must shift his quarters, and scuttled away to his 

 master with a train of bullocks stampeding in his rear. This 

 of course was an extreme instance of bank shaking, but many 

 a time and oft have I known a heavy and heedless footfall mar 

 the success of a promising cast from similar ground. And I 

 could point out several reaches of well-stocked water which 

 most of the local anglers have come to regard as scarcely worth 

 fishing simply from their not allowing for the ' quaking ' cha- 

 racter of the ground. Experience alone will teach the necessary 

 caution, but where the buck-bean shows its silver stars, or ' the 

 wild marsh marigold shines like fire,' the fly fisher may at once 

 accept a notice to move gently and hghtly. 



To return to the question of ' up ' or ' down.' In a very rapid 

 river, again, more, I think, is lost than gained by the up-stream 

 cast. The line is brought down so rapidly to the caster that it 

 is hardly possible for him to keep it taut enough for the fish to 

 hook itself, and ' striking ' is practically out of the question. 



