My ambition is as great as my skill is feeble; to capture big trout with
the dry fly in the Test, that would content me, and nothing under that.
But I can't see the natural fly on the water; I cannot see my own fly,
Let it sink or let it swim.
I often don't see the trout rise to me, if he is such a fool as to rise;
and I can't strike in time when I do see him. Besides, I am unteachable
to tie any of the orthodox knots in the gut; it takes me half an hour to
get the gut through one of these newfangled iron eyes, and, when it is
through, I knot it any way. The "jam" knot is a name to me, and no more.
That, perhaps, is why the hooks crack off so merrily. Then, if I do spot
a rising trout, and if he does not spot me as I crawl like the serpent
towards him, my fly always fixes in a nettle, a haycock, a rose-bush, or
whatnot, behind me. I undo it, or break it, and put up another, make a
cast, and, "plop," all the line falls in with a splash that would
frighten a crocodile. The fish's big black fin goes cutting the stream
above, and there is a _sauve qui peut_ of trout in all directions.
I once did manage to make a cast correctly: the fly went over the fish's
nose; he rose; I hooked him, and he was a great silly brute of a
grayling. The grayling is the deadest-hearted and the foolishest-headed
fish that swims.
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