FLY FISHING FOR TROUT AND GRAYLING. 271 
It was a hot forenoon in August, one of those tantalising days 
when, 
Instead of one unchanging breeze 
There blow a thousand little airs, 
and I soon perceived that there was little profit in hunting the 
‘catspaws’ which supplied the needful ripple—if you could 
only catch them. So I induced my friends to land me some 
three miles from the shepherd’s hut at the end of the loch 
where we were to find our luncheon. I was equipped for 
wading, and had before me several reaches of fine gravel 
where the water deepened very gradually towards the ‘ broo’— 
that critical point, where, in this as in many other lakes, the 
shoreward shallow rapidly shelves away into water too deep for 
the fly. In fact it often happens that at this point a belt of 
water from ten to twenty yards in breadth contains all the best 
of the taking fish. Within this belt are mostly small fry, with- 
out it lies the deep, only fit for trolling. The water before me 
was smooth as glass, the bottom delightful for wading. Moving 
cautiously to make the warning wave which must precede me as 
small as possible, I advanced into the lake as far as I could, and 
as I did so became more and more aware that fish were moving 
just where the water deepened within a long cast of my two- 
handed rod. I threw but one fly, and that smaller than the 
size I usually preferred. Throwing as far as I could, I let my 
whole cast sink before giving any movement to the fly, and 
was repeatedly rewarded by finding that a trout had hooked 
himself a foot or so under water. Every now and then, how- 
ever, the fly dropped so close before the nose of a feeding fish 
that he was fast on the instant. Briefly, when we met at our tryst 
(where I confess to have been half an hour late) my friends had 
three fish between them, whilst I had six-and-thirty. In this 
case it will be seen the secret of success lay in keeping low, so 
that the effect of refraction kept the unimmersed portion of the 
fly fisher’s figure practically out of sight. 
My next illustration shall be one out of a thousand memories 
of the tamous Driffield beck. It was a July day some forty 
