FLY FISHING. 



47 



in indiscriminate confusion. On the other occasion before allu- 

 ded to I tied up something intended to be mistaken for a fly, 

 though I never thought of making it resemble any one in par- 

 ticular. The wings, or what was intended for them, was of 

 the quill feather of a partridge's wing, with some herls of the dark 

 brown feathers of the same wing clumsily tied on to look like legs, 

 for I did not then even know how to wind on a partridge feather as 

 a hackle. The coarse brown silk with which I had tied on the hook, 

 by winding down a second time stood instead of a body, and the 

 result proved that nothing could have done better ; as with some 

 half dozen or so of these flies, and in the still deeps too. I rose an 

 immense number of unusually fine trout, though not being then 

 much accustomed to the subduing of large fish, and very nervous 

 where withal at my sudden acquaintance with so many of the gran- 

 dees of the stream, I allowed many of the most weighty to carry off 

 my flies, till at last my whole stock was exhausted, but still, not before 

 I had succeeded in making some very important stoppages in 

 transitu ; in fact quite sufficient to fill my fishing bag, and to 

 excite a due portion of admiration on my return home. 



The chief thing to be attended to in trimming flies is to get the 

 proper colours, which is often not so much attended to as neatness 

 in the formation of the fly itself, though the latter ought by no 

 means to be neglected. The fault I have generally discovered in the 

 flies purchased at the fishing tackle shops is, that a sufficient differ- 

 ence is not made in the proportion of the different insects they are 

 intended to represent ; as we not unfrequently see a cow dung fly 

 and a blue dun with bodies of the same proportions, and wings of 

 the same form ; whereas the former has, as we all know, a short 

 thick body with flat wings like the common blue bottle, and the latter 

 a remarkably slight body with the wings erect like those of a but- 

 terfly. Most indeed of the artificial flies sold in the shops are 

 made by persons who not only have never fished, but who in fact 

 have never cast their eyes on the flies they attempt to imitate, 

 which are merely taken from artificial patterns, each copy becom- 

 ing less like nature, till at last they bear about as much resem- 

 blance to the original insects, as the shipping we sometimes see in 

 young ladies drawing books, bear to the originals they purport to 

 represent " when sailing o'er the boundless deep." In order to 

 make good artificial flies they should be copied from the real fly, 

 and hence no fly fisher can be considered truly such until he can 



