" Young Master Izaak" 203 



" Viator. Has young Master Izaak 

 Walton been here too ? 



" Piscator. Yes, marry has he Sir, and 

 that again and again too, and in France 

 since, and at Rome, and at Venice, and I 

 can't tell where : but I intend to ask him 

 a great many hard questions so soon as 

 I can see him, which will be, God willing, 

 next month." (Cotton was writing in 

 March 1676.) 



An interesting fact, noted first, I think, 

 by Cotton, is that the grayling may be 

 taken in any of the cold months, espe- 

 cially during a frost. He tells us that he 

 " did once take upon the sixt day of 

 December one, and only one, of the 

 biggest Graylings and the best in season, 

 that ever I saw, or tasted . . . and have 

 sometimes in January, so early as New 

 Years-tide, and in frost and snow taken 

 Grayling in a warm sunshine day for an 

 hour or two about noon ; and to fish for 

 him with a grub it is then the best time 

 of all." 



The description of flies for use during 

 the season given by Cotton is far ahead 

 of anything which had appeared pre- 

 viously, and for long afterwards remained 

 the standard authority to which fly-fishers 

 referred. Any one who imagines that the 

 flies used more than two hundred years 



