THE SYSTEM OF ARTIFICIAL FLIES. 6/- 



tinctly unsound ; and if my reader will follow me in the 

 next few pages, calling to mind, also, his own fly-fishing; 

 experiences, I have little doubt that he will arrive at a 

 similar conclusion. In fact the arguments of the two* 

 schools are mutually destructive.. 



The position of the *' formalists " is as follows :— 



Trout take artificial flies only because they in some- 

 sort resemble the natural flies which they are in the 

 habit of seeing ; if this be not so, and if colour is the 

 only point of importance, why does not the 'colourist'' 

 fish with a bunch of feathers tied on the hook ' pro- 

 miscuously ?' why adhere to the form of the natural 

 fly at all 1 Evidently because it is found, as a matter of 

 fact, that such a bunch of feathers will not kill ; in other- 

 words, because the fish do take the artificial for the natural 

 insect. If this be so, it follows that the more minutely 

 the artificial imitates the natural fly the better it will kill ; 

 and also, by a legitimate deduction, that the imitation of 

 the fly on the water at any given time is that which the 

 fish will take best. 



To the above argument the " colourists " reply : — 



Your theory supposes that Trout can detect the 

 nicest shades of distinction between species of flies> 

 which in a summer's afternoon may be numbered 

 actually by hundreds, thus crediting them with an. 

 amount of entomological knowledge which even a pro- 

 fessed naturalist, to say nothing of the angler himself,, 

 very rarely possesses ; whilst at the same time you draw 

 your flies up and across stream in a way in which no- 

 natural insect is ever seen, not only adding to the impos- 



F 2 



