CHAPTER VI

UNCLASSIFIED

OF HOVERING AND SOARING, AND OF CRUISING TROUT.

The trout that is glued to the bottom is generally a pretty hopeless fish. He is either not willing to feed, or, being willing, his suspicions have been aroused and he has gone down. Pretty stories are told of how such fish are occasionally startled into taking by the fly being slammed down with violence on or just behind their heads, but no such instance has come within my experience.

But the trout which is hovering in mid-water or near the surface is always a hopeful subject. Anglers will tell you he is willing to feed. In my belief, he is more than that; he is generally actively feeding—under water.

I remember a trout which lay in the same hole with six grayling. He was hovering not far below the surface, but would have nothing to say to a series of dry flies of appropriate pattern offered him; but a wet Greenwell’s Glory was too much for him, and he turned and took it first cast. He was undoubtedly feeding on nymphs, but not over weed, and so not bulging; yet he presented only the appearance of hovering, or, as Walton generally calls it, “soaring.”

Another likely fish is the cruiser on his way to his feeding-station. If I see a wedge-shaped ripple advancing irregularly upstream, and broken at times by a dimple in the centre, I always feel hopeful, and I know that such trout are nearly always of unusual size for the water. It is, of course, difficult to place the fly exactly; but if that difficulty is overcome, your trout will take it most unsuspiciously. The best course is to throw to one side and a little ahead of the last rise.

A more difficult proposition is the cruiser who has a small defined beat. You find him moving up the bank in such wise that every cast is short of his rise; but suddenly, if you are not ware, you will find that he has turned and sailed downstream to the bottom of his beat, and that your rod and line are absolutely over him. Such a trout seems always fastidious and picksome, but it is all the more gratifying to circumvent him. He is usually taking toll of insects collected in eddies, and a spinner of sorts is more likely to take him than a dun; but he will often rush for a fly that is being withdrawn under water.

OF THE PORPOISE ROLL.

There is one peculiarly irritating kind of rise in which trout indulge. Just like porpoises, they come up, and, scarcely breaking the surface with the head, expose first the back fin and then the tail as they go down. Often of an afternoon or evening it seems as if every trout in the river were busy at this game. The difficulty is to know, on such occasions, what they are taking. “Detached Badger” (p. 119 of “Dry-Fly Fishing”) suggests larvæ, but though at times I have caught fish thus rising with sunk flies, I am inclined to doubt their taking nymphs or larvæ, and to suspect spinners. This (even if the trout be taking nymphs) is not properly described as “bulging,” that term being confined to the swashing rises when a fish rushes to and fro, making visible waves, ending in a boil as it turns in the act of fielding the subaqueous insect. Fortunately, this porpoise type of rise is rare, for when trout indulge in it sport is consistently bad. I have been promising myself for the last two or three seasons that, when I drop on such a rise, I will try Mr. F. M. Halford’s spent spinner patterns, but in an average number of days’ fishing I have failed to drop on an occasion when the trout have been thus rising.