THE HABITS OF THE TROUT 



every five of these trout, as if more lazy or less hungry 

 than its congeners of the pool, would rise nearly to the 

 surface and flop its tail over the floating bug, seldom 

 if ever missing its aim, and so far as I could see, the 

 insect being under water, secured its prey at every 

 sweep of the caudal fin. I noted that the fish with this 

 habit were always, seemingly, the largest trout in the 

 swim, hence their sluggish, lazy way of " taking things 

 as they come," even food or anything else of material 

 value in the economy of fish-life. 



Since the days of old Juliana Benners of i486, who 

 wrote the first printed book on fishing, writers on an- 

 gling have described the trout as a leaping fish when on 

 the hook, with acrobatic efforts to free themselves from 

 it. No angling outing could be described or a mono- 

 graph written on this fish without an allusion to his 

 rapid, aerial, and ofttimes successful gyrations to escape. 

 In a trout-angling experience of about half a century 

 but one instance of a trout, when hooked, leaping into 

 the air, on a slack line, has occurred to me. True, this 

 fish, when tightly held, will come to the surface, with 

 its head and part of its body out of the water, and 

 sometimes with the entire body at length on the sur- 

 face as it fights frantically to escape, but the angler's 

 rod held tightly and upward causes this ; given a slack 

 line and the trout will surge deep. On the one occa- 

 sion when the exception above noted occurred, the 

 trout was struck in the middle of a small pool, and a 

 bowlder protruded its head from the surface on the left 



57 



