Then why, a persevering reader may ask, do I fish? Well, it is stronger
than myself, the love of fishing; perhaps it is an inherited instinct,
without the inherited power. I may have had a fishing ancestor who
bequeathed to me the passion without the art. My vocation is fixed, and
I have fished to little purpose all my days. Not for salmon, an almost
fabulous and yet a stupid fish, which must be moved with a rod like a
weaver's beam. The trout is more delicate and dainty--not the sea-trout,
which any man, woman, or child can capture, but the yellow trout in clear
water.

A few rises are almost all I ask for: to catch more than half a dozen
fish does not fall to my lot twice a year. Of course, in a Sutherland
loch one man is as good as another, the expert no better than the duffer.
The fish will take, or they won't. If they won't, nobody can catch them;
if they will, nobody can miss them. It is as simple as trolling a minnow
from a boat in Loch Leven, probably the lowest possible form of angling.
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