August on the Itchen page 2

Sedge flies ought to be the best as they imitate the real insect to a nicety. For some reason too they are usually mounted on stronger and better tempered hooks than other large flies, besides being well tied. I must own to a great preference for a pronounced side bend; indeed, from experience of disaster in the past, I do not care to fish with any other shaped iron.

Where trout are actually taking the flies off the rushes, as anglers have told me they have seen them do, it must be difficult to attract the fish with an artificial. I have however on many an evening been successful by throwing right against the rushes, you can hear the rap t makes as it hits them and falls back on to the stream. In such places it is of course advisable to let the cast be made well above the fish. Do not necessarily take it: off the water directly it has passed the rise, for trout will often follow it downstream. Large grayling in September do this still more. You can often see (me with its nose against the fly until it catches sight of you watching the process.

On September afternoons it is as well to be upon the water soon after five o'clock; when, under shaded banks, good trout are well disposed to rise at small flies in preference to sedges. The most sparsely dressed hackle flies are quite as useful as winged patterns. Gray Quill gnat and Pale Watery Dun have been taken by many of my early September trout just after tea time, although I cannot pretend that they were the fly on the water. It all goes to show what chance or caprice governs the taste of a rising trout.

The modern experiments made by photographs from tanks under water will no doubt gradually effect changes in the tying of artificial flies. But even these experiments only- show us what the fly looks like to human eyes. It cannot pretend to enlighten us as to how it looks to the fish. We have no conception of a fish's sense of colour - very little conception of his perception of size. Nor again do we know whether he intends to swallow, as palatable food, everything which he takes into his mouth by rising at. It may be some pleasure to him to take hold of strange objects, just as it is a pleasure to a dog to snatch at an old bone, carry it a yard and drop it. He will do this again and again knowing quite well that it is of no use to him as food.