276 SALMON AND TROUT. 



Moreover, as the fly gives more hold to the water than the gut, 

 and therefore moves faster, it is apt to be rolled back on the 

 footlinks, and presented to the eye of the trout with most sus- 

 picious surroundings. Yet again, there are some places, and 

 those often favourite haunts for fish, which must be fished 

 down stream or not at all. Let me give one example out of 

 many. There was a small bye wash, some 120 yards long, 

 leading down from the upper to the lower branch of a Hamp- 

 shire stream ; the near bank sedgy, the farther bank com- 

 pletely overhung with dwarf willows. It was scarce five feet 

 wide, but mostly deep, and presenting in miniature every variety 

 of stream and pool. But to throw on it was simply impossible, 

 and I shall never forget the face of the old keeper when he saw 

 me proceeding to fish it. He sat down and lit his pipe, ex- 

 pecting a quiet time till I returned to my right mind and the 

 open river. 



Beginning at the top of the streamlet, and keeping the point 

 of my rod under the overarching boughs, I let my tail fly 

 float down the water, varying its descending movement by 

 wrist-play, while my dropper made dimples on the dark surface. 



In half a minute I was shouting for old W and the net. 



Luckily the fish chose to run up stream ; a powerful rod and 

 shortened line enabled me to keep him out of the willow roots, 

 and he was easily netted in the hatch hole. A second capture 

 followed very speedily, but the fish took down the watercourse, 

 and I disturbed fifty yards of promising water in my struggles 

 to keep him out of mischief. However, I managed to basket 

 a third fish before I reached the junction with the main river. 

 I tried the same unscientific but killing process on a dozen 

 subsequent occasions, never taking more than three or less than 

 two trout in that tangled thread of water. All these fish were 

 dark-skinned, owing to their shady habitat^ and all pretty nearly 

 of a size, weighing from eleven to fourteen ounces, something 

 doubtless in the conditions of the water making it a suitable 

 feeding ground for middle-aged trout, though the cause of ' this 

 thus-ness ' I cannot pretend to explain. 



