TROUT FISHING. 
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the bait blown several inches from the hook along the gut ; in 
the same way pike drive the dead roach a foot or more up the 
gimp. This habit of fish explain^ how it is that a hackle fly is a 
more deadly bait than a winged one. It is easy to understand 
that as the fish blows out the false food the water that goes with 
it will catch behind the hackle and drawing the hook straight out 
plant the point firmly in the jaw of the fish ; the water will have 
no such good hold with a fly made with wings. Again, it is a 
well-known maxim with anglers not to use bulky flies ; if the 
body of the artificial fly be large, the water that is being ejected 
with it w'ill readily catch it, and the fly being driven out sideways, 
the point of the hook will miss and the fish escape being hooked. 
Some fishermen think that they hook their fish with a turn of 
the wrist, or some fanciful manoeuvre on their part, but it is the 
opinion of the writer that in at least nine cases out of ten the 
fish hooks himself when trying to eject the bait. I have not 
seen this explanation of the superiority of hackle flies given 
before, and I commend it to the consideration of my fellow- 
anglers. 
Where there is water there is life, and besides the inhabitants 
of the waters, what numbers of creatures come to the riverside, 
some to feed, some to drink. The fisherman encounters all 
these. If he be at Killarney or in Scotland, he will fall in with 
the stately red deer, and how often have we met fo.xes in our 
fishing rambles ; others are nocturnal in their habits, but once 
when fishing a couple of miles above Ivy Bridge, on the Erme, 
I saw one coming down stream ; he paused for a moment, sitting 
up and looking straight in my face with those fine intelligent 
eyes of his, and then, taking a header, went away close past me. 
What number of water-rats run in and out of their holes. There 
every kind of bird is seen by the fisherman, but chiefly kingfishers, 
water-ouzels (these constantly flit before him), ring-ouzels, herons, 
wild fowl, and occasionally he may disturb the snipe upon her 
nest, curlew scream overhead, or in the breeding season call softly 
to one another in the bogs, whymbril, golden plover, peewit, 
wheatear partridges, pheasants — these are some of his com- 
panions in solitude ; at times he sees buzzards, and on one 
occasion in the Rhone valley in Switzerland, I surprised a pair 
of fine eagles that were feasting upon their prey not far from 
where I was fishing. I might go on and tell of almost every 
bird in the catalogue. 
In short, a fisherman must be a naturalist, and he sees 
Nature in her varying moods. On a perfectly fine day, when 
there is no cloud in the sky the sun shines in his full strength, 
and the water is low, so that there is little sport, he has com- 
pensation in the loveliness of his surroundings, and then it is 
that, peering into the stream, he sees in the very ripple of the 
water those wondrous touches of lustrous blue doubly distilled 
and reflected from the heavens, reminding the observer of a 
beauteous sapphire. I have no words to describe such colour. 
