ROD AND REEL. 129 



fly. If one takes, strike hard ; for their jaws are 

 stout and bony, and you must hook them well or 

 you '11 lose them in the struggle." 



We sat and watched. " There ! " suddenly 

 shouted John ; " one is n't dead yet." And whirl- 

 ing the boat about, he sent it flying toward a swirl 

 in the water, some twenty rods away, made by a 

 rising fish whose splash I had heard but did not 

 see. We had traversed half the distance, perhaps, 

 and all alert I sat, holding the coil and flies be- 

 tween my fingers, ready for a cast, when, as we 

 shot along, a bright vermilion flash gleamed for 

 an instant far below us, and a broad, yellow-sided 

 beauty broke the surface barely the length of my 

 rod from the boat. The swoop of a swallow is 

 scarcely swifter than was the motion of the boat as 

 John shied it one side, and, with a^ stroke which 

 would have snapped a less elastic paddle, sent it 

 circling around the ripples where the fish went 

 down. Twice did I trail the flies across the circle 

 and meet with no response ; but hardly had the 

 feathers touched the water at the third cast, when 

 the trout came up with a rush. He took the fly as 

 a hunter might take a fence, boldly. I struck, even 

 as he hung in mid-air, and down he went. After a 

 sharp fight of some ten minutes' length the trout 

 yielded, the fatal net enclosed him, and he lay flap- 

 ping within the boat. Thus five were captured in 

 little more than an hour's time, good two-and-a- 



6* I 



