98 best's art of angling. 



as to resemble the natural fly ; and observing the 

 Ji^reatest nicety in reoard to its symmetry ; contri- 

 bute to make it still more delio;htful. Whenever 

 he makes a fly, let him have the natural one 

 always before him, which will enable him to be 

 a competent judge of the materials most neces- 

 sary to dub it with; a list of which, and of the 

 best way to make the Palmer and May-Jiy^ 

 (which are the ground of artificial fly-anghng, I 

 shall give him by and by; for if he is not able to 

 make his own flies, he never will be a good fiy-fislier, 

 nor experience that pleasure, which he will re- 

 ceive bj' taking fishes with one of his own mak- 

 ing. He must never think a fl.y ill made, because 

 it will not kill fishes as well in anv other river as 

 that he particularly angles in; because the same 

 flies differ very much both in colour and size in 

 diflx?rent counties; besides which, jfies that will 

 be taken on their peculiar water one year in 

 April, will not perhaps be taken in the next till 

 the middle of May, the whole depending on the 

 warmth or coldness of the season. Mr. Taylor 

 in his treatise, where he describes the superiority 

 o^ fly-fishing, to the other branches of angling, 

 with great humour observes, that the angler is 

 surprised, at the manner in which the jisli take 

 t\iejiies\ and by seeing their surprize, when they 

 find tl ey are hooked, by rising at theJiiesH ! 1 

 shall now proceed to give the angler a descrip- 

 tion of the rods and lines, best calculated for 

 artificialjii/-fishing; but before 1 do, shall make 

 this one observation: that theory, without prac- 

 tice, can never make a man a proficient. 



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