Do not work your
flies in the least, but let them float down over the fish, or sink if
they will; he is more likely to take them under water than on the
top. And mind this rule: be patient with your fish; and do not
fancy that because he does not rise to you the first or the tenth
time, therefore he will not rise at all. He may have filled his
mouth and gone down to gorge; and when he comes up again, if your fly
be the first which he meets, he will probably seize it greedily, and
all the more so if it be under water, so seeming drowned and
helpless. Besides, a fish seldom rises twice exactly in the same
place, unless he be lying between two weeds, or in the corner of an
eddy. His small wits, when he is feeding in the open, seem to hint
to him that after having found a fly in one place he must move a foot
or two on to find another; and therefore it may be some time before
your turn comes, and your fly passes just over his nose; which if it
do not do, he certainly will not, amid such an abundance, go out of
his way for it. In the meanwhile your footlink will very probably
have hit him over the back, or run foul of his nose, in which case
you will not catch him at all.
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