14 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



favourite with some dry fly fishermen despite its 

 diminutive size and the impossibih'ty of dressing a 

 rcaUygood imitation of the natural fly ; the various 

 species of the " fisherman's curses" or the "smuts," 

 which are so often dreadfully appetising to trout of 

 chalk and limestone streams, yet which are scarcely 

 worth the attention of the practical fly tier owing 

 to the smallness of the hooks on which they must 

 be dressed ; the white ccenis^ tiniest of ephemeridce^ 

 which Mr. Halford tells us he has never yet found 

 in his autopsies of trout and grayling ; the several 

 gay "flies" known as the bumbles, which are 

 confined to grayling-land — that is, so far as this 

 book is concerned, east of the Avon; and lastly 

 the well-known coachman, which is an evening 

 fly, but which some Devonshire anglers keep on 

 their cast as a dropper the season through, all 

 weathers and all hours. This last is now beincf 

 used, too, by chalk stream anglers both for wet and 

 dry stream work as an evening lure. I was 

 tempted into buying a few with double hooks and 

 double split wings last season, but they killed no 

 trout. It is said that the trout takes the coachman 

 to be a white moth. Considering how rarely moths, 

 white or other, alight, or get driven upon the water, 

 it seems remarkable that trout should take the 

 coachman in so spirited a manner, and in the 

 morning, too, as well as at night. It is indeed 

 puzzling, as are so many other things connected with 

 the salmonidce. Sometimes just as one has come to 

 the conclusion that the grown trout of the clear 

 slow running stream is well informed to an an- 

 noying degree in the matter of flies, that he can 

 detect and will reject any but the most perfect 

 imitation in colour, shade, and size of the olive 



