26 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
A great many professional men are keen fly- 
fishermen—and especially doctors and barristers. 
Their trained minds and observing habits get to 
work almost unconsciously when out with rod 
and line. They revel in the open air. I havea 
pleasant memory of watching a famous London 
surgeon beside the Colne at West Drayton. He 
had in his landing net a three-pound trout which 
he had just caught on the Mayfly, and was look- 
ing as happy as a schoolboy over it. ‘“ There 
is,’ wrote John Bickerdyke, when angling editor 
of the Field, “so much delicacy with science in- 
volved in angling as practised to-day that I venture 
upon the dangerous assertion that of all the sports 
angling is followed by the largest number of men 
with refined tastes, and thus, perhaps, it is that 
so many professional men, particularly doctors 
and clergymen, are enthusiastic fly-fishermen.” 
Piscator non solum piscatur, as the motto says. 
The angler has, and uses, the chance of studying 
nature, field and hedgerow, the things that grow, 
the animals that move, the birds that fly. As he 
waits for the rise to begin, or pauses after a 
capture, he will perchance see flashing by “ king- 
fisher blue, bird of the sunlight”; or some 
small bird will alight by the waterside, have a 
series of brief baths, then fly away with an air 
of “ feeling much fresher now” ; or, perhaps, if all 
is still, the angler may see a throstle engaged with 
a huge worm ; there is a final shake, the worm is 
swallowed at one gulp, and there follows that 
look of triumph, which says quite clearly, ‘‘ There’s 
