APRIL FLIES 155 



small flecks of their whitish exuviae,* and swarms of a beautiful 

 little insect are careering round you. This is the delicate little 

 Jenny Spinner or Spinning Jenny. Curiously enough, 

 while Jackson does not give the iron-blue, he gives its imago, 

 under the name of the little white spinner, and he places it 

 early in May. By Theakstone it is called the pearl-drake. 

 " Ephemera " does not mention it. Wade calls it the evening 

 bloa. It is not at all an easy insect to imitate, so transparent 

 are its colours and so slender its proportions. It is almost as 

 great a favourite with the trout, however, as in its earlier form. 

 Imprimis, the tail is to be made of two strands of a light blue 

 dun hackle. The body is peculiar : at the head and tail it is of a 

 bright brown colour ; the middle part, however, is of a limpid 

 watery white. This is generally very badly imitated by a 

 few turns of dead white floss silk, which is about as like it as a 

 drumhead is to a window-pane. A clear horsehair or a shred of 

 fine gut wound round may bear some resemblance to it. But 

 the head and tail parts must be of bright orange-brown silk : 

 about two turns of finest sewing silk, just enough to show 

 clearly. The wings ah ! the wings ! What shall we do to 

 imitate their clear, delicate, watery transparency ? The tips of 

 two very pale light blue hackles might perhaps come near it. 

 The usual way, however, is as both Theakstone and Mr. 

 Ronalds recommend to dress the fly hackle fashion, or buzz, 

 as it is termed, with the lightest, silveriest dun hackle to be got. 

 If this fly could be well imitated (which it cannot), it would be a 

 valuable one, but hitherto our imitations are but sorry affairs, 

 and the fish appear to know it too, for although rising greedily 

 at the natural fly, they do not greatly favour the imitation, 



* This more particularly occurs with the later broods of the iron-blue, 

 which come on in June and early in July. Mr. Ronalds says upon this point : 

 " A little dark dun with a brown head, not exactly similar to, but very 

 much like the Iron Blue, ie found in August, and then a spinner like the 

 Jenny Spinner has an orange-coloured head, and the extremity of its body a 

 lighter colour. 



" There is also upon some waters a rather smaller ephemeral fly, similar 

 in colour to the Jenny Spinner, whose metamorphosis does not change much, 

 in tint, from the original. It is to be found in some seasons upon the Blythe, 

 in Staffordshire ; but upon lake Tal-y-llyn, in North Wales, this insect 

 so numerous, on warm evenings, as to form clouds, settling upon the dress 

 of a person passing by the lake (or upon any other object), where, in five or 

 ten minutes, it changes its coat, leaving the old one upon the dress, etc., 

 which, if of a dark colour, becomes spangled with seemingly white spots. 

 The tail increases to quite four times its original length when this change 

 takes place." 



I have seen this strikingly exemplified on the upper waters of the Test, 

 where it is a great favourite with the fish. I have seen the river covered 

 with rises when it is on, and have tried every fly I could think of in vain. 



