340 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [part ii. 



sons, both because you are not then so easily disco- 

 vered by the fish, and also because there are then but 

 few flies that can lie upon the water ; for where they 

 have so much choice, you may easily imagine they 

 will not be so eager and forward to rise at a bait, 

 that both the shadow of your body, and that of 

 your rod, nay, of your very line, in a hot, calm day, 

 will, in spite of your best caution, render suspected 

 to them : but even then, in swift streams, or by 

 sitting down patiently behind a willow-bush, you 

 shall do more execution than at almost any other 

 time of the year with any other fly ; though one may 

 sometimes hit of a day, when he shall come home 

 very well satisfied with sport with several other 

 flies. But with these two, the Green-drake and the 

 Stone-fly, I do verily believe I could, some days in 

 my life, had I not been weary of slaughter, have 

 loaden a lusty boy ; and have sometimes, I do ho- 

 nestly assure you, given over upon the mere ac- 

 count of satiety of sport ; which will be no hard 

 matter to believe, when I likewise assure you that, 

 with this very fly, I have, in this very river that 

 runs by us, in three or four hours taken thirty, five 

 and thirty, and forty, of the best Trouts in the ri- 

 ver. What shame and pity is it then, that such a 

 river should be destroyed by the basest sort of peo- 

 ple, by those unlawful ways of fire and netting in 

 the night, and of damming, groping, spearing, hang- 

 ing, and hooking, by day ! which are now grown 

 so common, that, though we have verv good laws 



