FLY FISHING FOR TROUT AND GRAYLING. 317 
Sunshine sometimes appears to improve the sport, and on ‘a 
glorious day in the golden-bright October,’ with the most 
ordinary care in casting towards the light, you may not only 
take fish after fish along sixty yards of water, but on reaching 
the end may retrace your steps and fish it over again with equal 
success. When grayling are rising freely you may fill your basket 
in perfectly smooth water by a long cast with the finest gut. 
A few words as to the style of casting which should be 
adopted may not be amiss. 
In the first place, I care very little for up-stream or down- 
stream fishing when grayling are my object. I cast right across 
the ford, with just a shade of upward tendency. Whether in 
working the stream I shall move up or down its course will be 
matter of convenience depending principally on the sun and wind. 
Grayling being chiefly found in the lower and broader reaches 
of the river, and affecting the mid-channel rather than the sides, 
cannot be reached by the up-stream cast unless you are wading 
deep, and not always then. If you wade you had better move 
up stream yourself to avoid disturbance, but you will still, I 
think, succeed better by throwing across than ahead. Grayling 
being, as I have said, gregarious, you will of course greatly im- 
prove your chances by fishing with at least two flies, and in a 
fair-sized river I seldom use less than three. Here the cross- 
throw has an obvious advantage. I have killed doublets a 
dozen times a day, with now and then three fish at a cast. 
‘Fine and far off’ should be the fly fisher’s maxim with 
grayling even more than with trout. But not the less must he 
study to throw as little shadow as possible. ‘The grayling lies 
chiefly in the open, and is easily to be approached under cover, 
so that everything may depend on your being on the right or 
wrong side of the water. 
It should be borne in mind that the grayling shoots upwards 
at the fly almost vertically, and, if there 1s any eddy, often 
misses it. Throw over him again and again no matter how 
quickly ; you will have him at last Iremember killing a good 
fish at Leintwardine at his eleventh nse. As to the life-like 
