82 TROUT FISHING 



water in its various parts had either been 

 approximately equalised, or had been 

 raised so much that none of them was 

 too rigorous for the comfort of the trout. 

 Other things being equal, it is the 

 shallows that the fish prefer. We see 

 this on rivers. Trout are to be found in 

 canals deep enough for large ships ; but 

 that is only because they cannot help 

 themselves. In a river their preferences 

 are unmistakable. It is not in the very 

 deep channels that the wise man seeks 

 them. A considerable pool in the middle 

 of a river they will not shun, being able, 

 from that ambush, to see all the living 

 dainties that come towards them over the 

 rim of gravel ; but in the very deep 

 channels they are absentees or merely 

 "passing through." It is undoubtedly 

 the shallows that they prefer : the tail of 

 the rapids, the rapids themselves, and, 

 in the slowly -moving stretch which is 

 usually bounded by the dykes of a miller's 

 dam, the sides, where the mud -banks 

 shelve upwards among the sedges. Their 



