up fast before the breeze; there are large fish to be taken, one or
two at least, even before the fly comes on. You need not change your
flies; the cast which you have on--governor, and black alder--will
take, if anything will. Only do not waste your time and muscle, as
you are beginning to do, by hurling your flies wildly into the middle
of the stream, on the chance of a fish being there. Fish are there,
no doubt, but not feeding ones. They are sailing about and enjoying
the warmth; but nothing more. If you want to find the hungry fish
and to kill them, you must stand well back from the bank--or kneel
down, if you are really in earnest about sport; and throw within a
foot of the shore, above you or below (but if possible above), with a
line short enough to manage easily; by which I mean short enough to
enable you to lift your flies out of the water at each throw without
hooking them in the docks and comfrey which grow along the brink.
You must learn to raise your hand at the end of each throw, and lift
the flies clean over the land-weeds: or you will lose time, and
frighten all the fish, by crawling to the bank to unhook them.
Believe me, one of the commonest mistakes into which young anglers
fall is that of fishing in 'skipjack broad;' in plain English, in
mid-stream, where few fish, and those little ones, are to be caught.
Those who wish for large fish work close under the banks, and seldom
take a mid-stream cast, unless they see a fish rise there.

The reason of this is simple. Walking up the Strand in search of a
dinner, a reasonable man will keep to the trottoir, and look in at
the windows close to him, instead of parading up the mid-street. And
even so do all wise and ancient trout. The banks are their shops;
and thither they go for their dinners, driving their poor little
children tyrannously out into the mid-river to fare as hap may hap.
Over these children the tyro wastes his time, flogging the stream