100 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



Ven. But, my loving Master, if any wind will not serve, then 

 I wish I were in Lapland, to buy a good wind of one of the honest 

 witches, that sell so many winds there, and so cheap. 



work, but the reader, if wishing to learn, had better consult Ronalds, the 

 capital work of Shipley, and Fitzgibbon's True Treatise on the Art of 

 Fly-Fishinfr, Lond., 1S3S, Chitty's Fly-Fisher's Text-Book, Lond., 1845, 

 and Bainbridge's Fly-Fisher s Guide, Liverpool, 1S16. 



The reader may be aware that anglers differ widely in their theories 

 respecting the choice of flies, some contending that the nicest possible 

 imitations should be made of the fly on the water, or rather that on which 

 the trout is feeding at the time ; others holding directly the reverse, and 

 asserting that no imitation deserving the name can be made, and that 

 when the natural fly is abundant the fish will reject any resemblance of it 

 which may be thrown to him. The French make their flies very much 

 from fancy, and though not such skilful anglers as the English, are far from 

 being unsuccessful with flies for which no entomologist could find a living 

 orisinal. It also seems to be established that salmon do not take flies 

 from being deceived by their resemblance to the natural, in some places 

 the most gaudy colors being the most in repute, in others, as in Wales, 

 those of sober brownish hues. So also as to the adaptation of colors to the 

 time of day, the color of the water, &c., one successful angler will lay 

 down to you a set of rules, another, equally successful, directly the re- 

 verse. In fact, almost every practised fly-fisher has a creed and system of 

 his own, though the advocates of exact imitation speak with artistic con- 

 tempt of all who differ from them ; and are in their turn ridiculed as pe- 

 dantic pretenders, or mad with too much learning. The truth, as in most 

 vexed questions, lies between the extremes. If nature be violently contra- 

 dicted, the trout are too keen-sighted not to detect tlie clumsy trick, and the 

 success of certain flies at certain seasons, and not at others, proves that 

 the fish have some rule in feeding. An angler goes to the stream and 

 tries one set of flies after another without success, until at last he takes a 

 trout; then, according to some authorities, he should examine the flies in 

 its stomach, and sit down on the bank and make (if he cannot find one like 

 it in his book) an imitation, with which he is often successful, but not 

 more so, probably, than if he had continued to cast the fly with which the 

 dissected fish had been caught. Often in comparing notes, two anglers on 

 the same stream will tell each other that they were unsuccessful till they 

 happily pitched upon the proper colors, yet the lucky fly of the one may 

 be very different from that of the other. Some undetected reason made 

 the fish feed more readily at that time than they had done before, for no 

 creatures are more capricious. The better plan is to imitate nature as 

 closely as possible, for it is certainly more likely that the fish will be so 

 deceived ; but to depend upon your experience and the lights you have at 

 the moment, rather than on printed rules and the dicta of any professor. 



