xl The Complete Angler 



ality, three or four flies, neat, and rightly made, and 

 not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers, all the 

 summer' 1 . Our ancestors, though they did not fish 

 with the dry fly, were intent on imitating the insect 

 on the water. As far as my own experience goes, 

 if trout are feeding on duns, one dun will take them 

 as well as another, if it be properly presented. But 

 my friend Mr. Charles Longman tells me that, after 

 failing with two trout, he examined the fly on the 

 water, an olive dun, and found in his book a fly 

 which exactly matched the natural insect in colour. 

 With this he captured his brace. 



Such incidents look as if trout were particular to 

 a shade, but we can never be certain that the angler 

 did not make an especially artful and delicate cast 

 when he succeeded. Sir Herbert Maxwell intends 

 to make the experiment of using, duns of impossible 

 and unnatural colours ; if he succeeds with these, 

 on several occasions, as well as with orthodox flies, 

 perhaps we may decide that trout do not distinguish 

 hues. On a Sutherland loch, an angler found that 

 trout would take flies of any colour, except that of 

 a light-green leaf of a tree. This rejection decidedly 

 looked as if even Sutherland loch trout exercised 

 some discrimination. Often, on a loch, out of three 

 flies they will favour one, and that, perhaps, not the 

 trail fly. The best rule is : when you find a 

 favourite fly on a salmon river, use it : its special 

 favouritism may be a superstition, but, at all events, 

 salmon do take it. We cannot afford to be always 

 making experiments, but Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 busking his flies the reverse way, used certainly to 

 be at least as successful with sea trout as his less 

 speculative neighbours in Argyllshire. 



In making rods, Walton is most concerned with 

 painting them : " I think a good top is worth pre- 

 serving, or I had not taken care to keep a top 



