I20 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



eager appetite, not the intruder's skill, has fixed the hook in the 

 Trout's jaws. It is a good fish, a pound and a quarter in weight — 

 a magnificent trout for a mountain stream. The fisherman plays 

 the Trout, handling his rod with much expenditure of muscle and 

 no delicacy of touch, much as a waggoner might handle his whip. 

 Oh ! the fish must break. No ; matter beats mind. The fish 

 yields, the waggoner triumphs. You leave him and the pool, 

 utterly disgusted. Why should he succeed where you have failed ? 

 Just because he happened to hit upon that particular moment 

 when an unknown impulse prompted the fish to rise. It was the 

 time of the take. 



Let us imagine a mild day and a soft wind in early spring. We 

 intend to fish one of those small " becks '' — eight or ten feet in 

 width — which tumble, helter-skelter, down the mountain-side. 

 The lower and thickly-wooded reaches in the valley we leave 

 behind us, and tramp on till we are some way up the mountain, 

 and till masses of limestone rock, all huddled together in savage 

 disorder, and tufts of coarse, grey-green grass have replaced 

 fields and woods. High above us hovers a kestrel. With the 

 black-faced sheep and a few mountain pipits the little falcon is 

 the only object in sight. And for a minute we abandon ourselves 

 to the subtle fascination of this solitude. 



We are on our fishing ground. First, the great question of 

 flies. In the early months a longish and a sober-coloured fly is 

 advisable. As a first cast, say a March-brown or stone fly, with 

 a small black gnat as dropper. But a grouse-hackle without 

 wings is, perhaps, as good as any, and indeed on small streams 

 which flow through barren and high ground, hackle-flies may, as 

 a general rule, be relied on as the most trustworthy. Gnats, 



