192 THE DRY-FLY MAN'S HANDBOOK 



bad time of it. Hard, cold winds have killed the 

 flies in their early stages, and the black-headed gulls 

 have increased greatly, and take a heavy toll of them. 

 The drake usually comes up about 25th May, but last 

 year, 191 1, the fly came up ten days earlier. There 

 was a very heavy rise the first few days, and after- 

 wards there were comparatively few females, and 

 although you saw plenty of the male gray drakes 

 kiting, there were no females to take them out over 

 the water, and they died in the trees and on land in 

 great numbers ; there were not enough on the water 

 to bring the trout up to them. I saw no schools of 

 trout that year." 



" It is most interesting to watch trout and their 



ways carefully in a lake. Most 

 Habits and manners of of them when surface feeding 

 trout in lake. have their regular feeding 



places, which they come to, 

 often from a considerable distance, as you can some- 

 times see from a fish's rises as he cruises along until 

 he finally settles down to a regular beat close in 

 shore, but always where it is calm, with the wind off 

 shore and where the flies are likely to collect and 

 remain settled on the surface. These feeding spots 

 are often clearly marked by a rock standing out in the 

 water, the end of an old wall carried out into the lake, 

 or a clump of trees on shore, especially sycamore, 

 which give good shelter for the flies. Such a spot is 

 illustrated in Plate XIII. These are the fish that will 

 provide the best sport for the dry-fly fisherman. To 



