80 TROUT FISHING 



ally, it is a traditional belief that, except- 

 ing on lakes which are shallow all over, 

 trout away from the shores cannot be 

 induced to rise at a fly. I had accepted 

 the tradition ; but the results of the 

 experiment that calm morning were, in 

 a pleasant sense, disturbing. It had 

 struck me that, as trout in the middle 

 of the loch were rising at real flies, 

 there was no reason for thinking that 

 they would fight shy of artificial 

 ones ; and the expectation had been 

 justified. 



Still, the experiment was not yet 

 complete. Thinking that my host and 

 hostess, when I spread out before them 

 the produce of the deeps, which were 

 believed to have no produce at all, would 

 say, " O ! but you would have caught 

 them along the shore too, if you had 

 fished there : all that has happened is that 

 the trout have come on the rise again," I 

 tried the shore, tried it quite fairly for 

 half an hour, and did not get a single 

 rise. 



