Fly Fishing for Grayling, 185 



find out the favourite localities of the fish — at the 

 tail of a deep pool, in the deep water, under a bank, 

 where the water is pretty deep and running pretty 

 rapidly, in the swirl and eddy made by a rock, 

 but there you are more likely to get a trout. 

 The club water at Leintwardine is certainly 

 the best for grayling ; below, in the Downton Castle 

 water, although there are many excellent places, 

 yet there are more trout. In Oakley Park, also, 

 capital sport is to be had. The grayling appear 

 to thrive well in the Itchin, the Test, and the Avon. 

 I took a grayling in the Test, at Broadlands, 

 weighing within an ounce of 4 lbs. 



Maggot and grasshopper fishing for grayling, in 

 my opinion, is worse than any worm fishing — and 

 it is destructive beyond measure to future sport. It 

 is no excuse to say that these big fish do not and 

 will not rise at the fly. Of course they will not, 

 because the greater part of them are taken by the 

 grasshopper. What sport there can be in lugging 

 up a big grayling with tackle that would hold a 

 twenty-pound salmon I cannot imagine. I can re- 

 collect a certain captain, a member of the club, who 

 never came to fish till he could do so with the grass- 

 hopper, killing in one day thirty-five grayling — all 

 caught in this poaching fashion — averaging ijlbs. 

 each, many of them 2 lbs. each, and three scaled 

 3 lbs. This practice not only stops all fly-fishing, 



