112 ARTIFICIAL FLIES. 



he is very cunning and acute in seeing and avoiding dan- 

 ger. In colored or clearing waters he will oft run great 

 risks, when it is evident he is aware of danger. He will 

 cut away the tail-end of your minnow or strip it off the 

 tackle, and adroitly avoid the hooks ; or if struck, his des- 

 perate blast to dislodge them oft sends the minnow several 

 inches up the gut, and his game and struggles are those of 

 the salmon tribes. He will feint and gambol with your fly 

 or bait, and dash it with his tail ; but the artful dodger has 

 been stayed by the tenacious hook in his slippery side. 

 After rapacious nights he grounds himself alone in his 

 haunts by the side of a stone until roused on his fins again 

 by the flutter of the new-hatched flies above his head. He 

 then takes no notice of the minnows, or the minnows of 

 him, save giving him way as he moves, like other inferiors. 

 When the fly he selects comes in good plenty he refuses all 

 others, until he is satisfied or the supplies cease. Such is 

 the trout the most beautiful, cunning, and courageous of 

 all the finny tenantry of the streams the leading customer 

 of the small fly fisher, with whom he has to deal in open 

 day, and mostly in clear water ; and for whom he must 

 assimulate his wares to such as are issuing on the market 

 from nature's storehouses, and are in immediate request. 



Grayling rise boldly and freely at the top food of the 

 season, and often give capital sport to the flyfisher. They 

 have their choice and favorite flies, but are not so tenacious 

 or scrupulous as the trout ; they are a more simple and 

 more social fish, gliding together in the eddies and stills of 

 moderate depth, that lie betwixt or close to the streams. 

 They spawn the beginning of April, and are in best con- 

 dition in autumn. 



Smelt are expert flycatchers the readiest customers of 

 the small flyfisher ; from August to the end of the season 

 the streams up the Ure are full of them. They occupy the 

 same haunts and places the old ones had done before them. 

 On fine days and low waters imitations of the small lively 



