He expects it to escape on shore the next
moment, and chops at it fiercely and hastily, instead of following
and examining. Add to this the fact that when he is under the bank
there is far less chance of his seeing you; and duly considering
these things, you will throw away no more time in drawing, at least
in chalk-streams, flies over the watery wastes, to be snapped at now
and then by herring-sized pinkeens. In rocky streams, where the
quantity of bank food is far smaller, this rule will perhaps not hold
good; though who knows not that his best fish are generally taken
under some tree from which the little caterpillars, having determined
on slow and deliberate suicide are letting themselves down gently by
a silken thread into the mouth of the spotted monarch, who has but to
sail about and about, and pick them up one by one as they touch the
stream?--A sight which makes one think--as does a herd of swine
crunching acorns, each one of which might have become a 'builder
oak'--how Nature is never more magnificent than in her waste.
The next mistake, natural enough to the laziness of fallen man, is
that of fishing down-stream, and not up.
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