The Compleat ^Angler 



DECEMBER. 



Few men angle with the fly this month, no more than they do in 

 January ; but yet, if the weather be warm (as I have known it some- 

 times in my life to be, even in this cold country, where it is least 

 expected), then a brown, that looks red in the hand, and yellowish 

 betwixt your eye and the sun, will both raise and kill in a clear water 

 and free from snow-broth ; but, at the best, it is hardly worth a 

 man's labour. 



And now, sir, I have done with fly-fishing, or angling at the top, 

 excepting once more, to tell you, that of all these (and I have named 

 you a great many very killing flies) none are fit to be compared with 

 the drake and stone-fly, both for many and for very great fish ; and 

 yet there are some days that are by no means proper for the sport. 

 And in a calm you shall not have near so much sport, even with 

 daping, as in a whistling gale of wind, for two reasons, both because 

 you are not then so easily discovered by the fish, and also because 

 there are then but few flies that can lie upon the water ; for where 

 they have so much choice, you may easily imagine they will not be 

 so eager and forward to rise at a bait, that both the shadow of your 

 body, and that of your rod, nay of your very line, in a hot calm day, 

 will, in spite of your best caution, render suspected to them ; but even 

 then, in swift streams, or by sitting down patiently behind a willow 

 bush, you shall do more execution than at almost any other time of 

 the year with any other fly ; though one may sometimes hit of a day, 

 when he shall come home very well satisfied with sport with several 

 other flies : but with these two, the green-drake and the stone-fly, 

 I do verily believe I could, some days in my life, had I not been weary 

 of slaughter, have loaden a lusty boy; and have sometimes, I do 

 honestly assure you, given over upon the mere account of satiety of 

 sport ; which will be no hard matter to believe, when I likewise 

 assure you, that with this very fly, I have in this very river that runs 

 by us, in three or four hours taken thirty, five-and-thirty, and forty 

 of the best trouts in the river. What shame and pity it is, then, that 

 such a river should be destroyed by the basest sort of people, by those 

 unlawful ways of fire and netting in the night, and of damming, 

 groping, spearing, hanging, and hooking by day, which are now 



