THE LIST OF FLIES. 



FEBRUARY. 



THE feathered choristers resume their song the starved 

 trout begins to stir as winter retires, and he courts the 

 genial currents grayling glide in the calms, and smelt 

 abide in the deeps. Few are the flies and short the inter- 

 vals of flyfishing during the days of February an hour or 

 two before, and after noon, opens and closes the sport for 

 the day ; and often for days, and sometimes the whole 

 month, the weather and water forbid flyfishing. 



1ST. THE NEEDLE BROWN. 1 Full length,* a quarter 

 to a quarter and one-sixteenth ; length, short of a quarter, 



(1) This fly is a great favourite of mine during the early spring and autumn 

 months ; it would be a most valuable auxiliary to the flyflsher if it could be accur- 

 ately imitated, but owing to its diminutive size, this is by no means an easy task. 

 The author is far more explicit in his description of the fly itself, than he is in the 

 mode of dressing it, his term, " fine fleshy grizzled hair," being very ambiguous, 

 although I have no doubt that he knew perfectly well himself what was intended 

 by the expression. Mr. Francis has on several occasions written at some length 

 upon the merits of this fly, and in his Book on Angling gives the following pattern, 

 with which I have killed a good many grayling on both the Yore and Wharfe all 

 depends however on the fly being dressed very neat and fine. Body, a fine shred 

 from the yellowish quill of a thrush's wing ; legs, a grizzled blue dun cock's hackle ; 

 under wings, starling's feather, used sparingly, and above them two fine slips of hen 

 blackbird's wing. The late James Ogden, of Cheltenham, who was a veteran angler, 

 sent me, about three or four years ago, some patterns of this fly, which he had copied, 

 from nature, and very excellent imitations they were. Jackson alludes to it as the 

 small Willow Fly. Wade, in Halcyon, styles it the Spanish Needle, but Ronald's, in 

 his standard work on Flies, does not mention it at all ; it kills well in September and 

 October, when I prefer it dressed hacklewise with a feather from inside of a snipe's 

 wing, using yellow silk, with a little mole's fur for body. 



* " Full length" is the length from the nose to the ends of the folded wings, 

 where they lie close over the back like the stone fly, &c., and extend beyond the end 

 of the body. 



"Length" is the length of the flies in parts of an inch, measured from the 

 extremity of the face or nose to the end of the body. 



c 



