106 AET Or ANGLING. 



" The beauty of fishing is to do the business 

 quick (though not in a hurry), because this sport is 

 every moment dependent on the weather. Walton 

 says, " before using, soak what lengths of gut you 

 have in water for half-an-hour." In the new school, 

 I should rather say, draw what lengths you want 

 through Indian rubber for half-a-quarter of a minute. 

 Let a gut length or two (ready fitted up with flies), 

 and also a few spare tail flies be thus prepared to go 

 on in an instant, and put round your hat. For flies 

 (as Barker observes for his night angling), take 

 white for darkness ; red in medio ; and black for 

 lightness. The Yellow Dun^ and Eed Palmer, 

 which has a black head, partake a little of all, and 

 therefore, with the addition of a White Moth for 

 dark nights, the angler may, in what few rivers I 

 have ever fished, do vastly well. No doubt, how- 

 ever, that an occasional variety of flies might answer 

 a little better, and particularly if these had been 

 too much hacknied by other people. But in the 

 long run, I have never found sufficient advantage 

 from variety to be troubled with taking more than 



* The Yellow Dun is a beautiful insect, and is to be used 

 in the morning and evening, during the months of April and 

 May, and again in September. The body is made of yellow 

 yarn unravelled, and mixed with a little pale ash-coloured fur ; 

 the wings from the under part of a snipe's wing, to be made 

 upright, with a pale dun hackle for legs. 



