THE COiMPLETE ANGLER. 79 



and do assure you, which I rememher by a very remarkable 

 token, I did once take upon the sixth day of December one, and 

 only one, of the biggest graylings, and the best in season, that 

 ever T yet saw or tasted ; and do usually take trouts too, and 

 with a fly, not only before the middle of this month, but almost 

 every year in February,* unless it be a very ill spring, indeed ; 

 and have sometimes in January, so early as New-year's-tide, and 

 in frost and snow, taken grayling in a warm sun-shine day for 

 an hour or two about noon ; and to fish for him with a grub it is 

 then the best time of all. 



I shall therefore begin my fly-fishing with that month,']" — though 



* Chap. vi. of the first part. 



t As has been before stated, the anglers of our day are divided into two 

 schools, which may be conveniently distinguished as the routine and the 

 non-imitation. The former hold that the trout should be angled for only 

 with a nice imitation of the natural flies in season at the time, and that, 

 therefore, the flies seen on the water, or found in the belly of the fish, are 

 to be carefully imitated. To this school belong the older writers, from 

 Venables down, and Taylor,B!aine.Hansard, South, Shipley, and Fitzgibbon, 

 &c., &c. The non-imitatio7i school (which reckons among its adherents 

 Rennie, Professor Wilson, Fisher, of the Angler's Souvenir, &c., &c.), 

 hold that no fly can be made so as to imitate nature well enough to war- 

 rant us in believing that the fish takes it for the natural fly ; and, there- 

 fore, little reference is to be had to the fly upon which the trout are feed- 

 ing at the time. " The fish," says Professor Rennie {Alphabet of Angling), 

 " appear to seize upon an artificial fly, because, when drawn along the 

 water, it has the appearance of being a living insect, whose species is quite 

 unimportant, as all insects are equally welcome. The aim of the angler, 

 accordingly, ought to be to have his artificial fly calculated, by its form 

 and colors, to attract the notice of the fish, in which case he has a much 

 greater chance of success than by making the greatest effbils to imitate 

 any particular species of fly." Fisher {Angler's Souvenir) remarks, in 

 the same strain : " Wherever fly-fishing is practised — in England, Scot- 

 land, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany, and America — it has been ascer- 

 tained, from experience, that the best flies are those which are not shaped 

 professedly in imitation of any particular living insect. Red, black, and 

 brown hackles, and flies of the bittern's, mallard's, partridge's, woodcock's, 

 grouse's, bald-coot's, martin's, or blue hen's feathers, with dubbing of 

 brown, yellow, or orange, occasionally blended, and hackles, red, brown, 

 or black, under the wings, are the most useful flies that an angler can use 

 in daylight, on any stream, all the year through. For night-fishing in 

 lakes, or long still ponds, no fly is better than a white hackle. The direc- 

 tions given in books to beat the bushes by the side of the stream, to see 



