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CHAPTER IV. 



TROUTING FLIES. 



THE fastidiousness of many anglers with respect to 

 their trouting flies has always occasioned me astonish- 

 ment. I cannot, for my own part, be made very exactly 

 to understand the grounds of it. Certainly, when 

 brought to bear upon our Scottish waters, it is alto- 

 gether out of place ; yet how frequently do I meet with 

 those in my fishing excursions, who exulting in the 

 possession of five or six dozen varieties of insect imita- 

 tions, consume the primest portion of the day in testing 

 their attractive powers, now unlooping one, because it 

 is, they opine, a shade too dark, now another on account 

 of its want of tinsel, attaching in turn the latest urban 

 conceit redoubted as a killer, the fail-me-never of some 

 sporting parson or half-pay hero. 



What, I naturally ask, are the notions of such anglers 

 with respect to the tastes or, it may be, the optics of the 

 trout ? Do they suppose this fish, in regard to its 

 surface food, so singularly capricious as to refuse all 

 others but the insect of the day, so whimsical as even to 

 resist the claims of hunger itself, unless wrought on by 

 the appearance of some peculiarly streaked water-fly ? 

 Do they fancy it discriminative of every shade or hue in 

 the wing, body, and feelers of its prey ? keenly sensible 

 of the smallest deviation in colour, more so than of a 



