But when the trout does rise, what do you suppose he thinks? Does he really believe that the curious creature with a barbed tail hovering over his head is a natural fly? I doubt it. The flies ordinarily used would drive an entomologist to distraction. The great scarlet and white and yellow flies which have caused so many Rangeley lake trout to come to grief are, I fancy, unlike any living insect in that region, or anywhere else. The trout sees something moving on the water, and as experience has taught him that such fluttering objects are usually good to eat, his weakness for live food tempts him to pounce upon it without stopping to reason out the matter. But when he finds that this deceitful fly is entirely tasteless, he will drop it at once, unless the fisherman is prompt in "striking." This means a quick upward movement of the tip of the rod, a motion imparted, of course, at the butt, but communicated along rod and line. The movement "strikes" the hook into the fish. One can not be too quick in striking, but if too much force be used, the rod may be snapped at the second joint. Yet that is not the way in which rods are most frequently broken. If you have drawn in your flies so closely that you can not readily recover them, and your rod is pointing nearly straight upward, even a gentle attempt to strike a small fish is likely to break a rod. Once, I was fishing with a heavy rod from a raft which was drifting across a Canadian lake. The wind was so strong that I was obliged to cast with it, and then the raft rapidly drifted down upon my flies. A trout weighing not a quarter of a pound rose when my rod was nearly perpendicular, and the flies were close before me; instinctively I struck. The reward of my carelessness was that the rod, which would have landed a ten-pound fish, was cleanly broken into two pieces. Never draw the flies so near you that you have not safe and complete control of your rod, either for the back cast or for a strike.