290 SALMON AND TROUT. 



Add to these flies a Red and a Black Palmer (the former 

 ribbed with gold, the latter with silver twist), for use when the 

 water is beginning to clear after a spate, and you will be 

 ' armed and well prepared ' under ordinary conditions in an 

 immense majority of British streams. I speak with some con- 

 fidence on this head, as for many years I noted the flies with 

 which I killed on each angling holiday, and still continue to 

 record any new experience. The eleven flies named above 

 adding the Red Spinner (whereof hereafter) to make up the 

 dozen have certainly been answerable for fully three-fourths 

 of my captures in brook and river. 



MARCH BROWN 



Let me now say a word of the flies which, unlike those 

 numbered above, have but a short reign, though fora time they 

 can hardly be dispensed with. Of the March Brown and the 

 Green Drake, which at once suggest themselves under this head, 

 so much has been written, and in such detail, that I might 

 fairly say, in the words of the briefest epitaph I ever read, 

 'Silence is wisdom.' I do not profess to be an authority in 

 either case as to the much-discussed niceties of feather or 

 colour, and will merely remark that in my own experience I 

 have found both insects work better as hackles than as wing 

 flies, and prefer them tied a shade under the natural size. 



The little ' Iron Blue ' is a very killing fly on cool April 



