138 AMERICAN GAME. 
along the line of the Erie railroad, where the country 
people will tell you that there are go trout in the river, 
though the small creeks are full of them. The truth is 
the fish in the river are very much fewer in number, but 
as much superior in size and weight. They who, like 
me, prefer to kill a one, two or three-pounder to ten 
dozen fingerlings of four or five ounces each, are advised 
to try the miller by dusk or by moonlight, and if there 
be a big fellow about, he is pretty sure to be-tempted. 
The trout does not, when feeding, travel or swim in 
shoals; he lies in wait in his own peculiar haunt, and 
thence strikes at whatever he sees passing that tempts 
his appetite. This haunt is generally in the neighbor- 
hood of a stone or root, near the head or tail of a rapid, 
in an eddy or swirl of the current, or in the broken wa- 
ter caused by the division of a current above the head 
of an island or shoal, and its reunion below it. Here 
they lie with the head up stream, perfectly motionless, 
not even wagging a tail or twinkling a fin, until their 
object is in view, and then darting upon it with speed 
that mocks the eye. They are insensible to sound, but 
so quick of sight, and so wary that the mere shadow of 
the rod projected across the water will prevent their 
taking a fly, however hungry they “may be, and how- 
ever skillfully the lure may be presented. 
It is better to fish down stream, away from the sun, 
and across the wind, if possible; but the three contin- 
gencies are not always compatible. When a trout is 
