46 ON ARTIFICIAL FLIES. 



CHAPTER III. 



ON ARTIFICIAL ELIES. 



OF LATE YEARS a new doctrine in my opinion a 

 totally wrong one has been sent forth about 

 artificial flies. Some Scotch writers were the 

 first promulgators of it, and they have carried 

 it to ridiculous extravagance. They positively 

 maintain that there is no likeness between the 

 natural fly and the artificial one, and that when 

 natural flies are on the water the angler will be 

 more successful by using artificial flies as widely 

 different from them in shape, colour, &c. as may 

 be. A nondescript artificial fly will succeed better, 

 they say, than a bad resemblance, and every at- 

 tempt at imitation, in their opinion, produces at 

 the best but a bad resemblance. These angling- 

 heretics contend that fish rising at a natural fly 

 immediately detect, by comparison of course, the 

 bad imitation, and refuse to rise at it ; whereas 

 they will rise at some outlandish artificial that 

 differs, as much as chalk does from Cheshire 

 cheese, from the living fly on the water. They 

 say, that when they go fly-fishing they catch 

 some of those flies that are on the water, and fish 

 with artificial flies totally different from them, 



