120 ARTIFICIAL FLIES. 



Grayling rise boldly and freely at the top food of the 

 season, and often give capital sport to the flyfisher. 

 They have their choice and favorite flies, but are not 

 so tenacious or scrupulous as the trout ; they are a 

 more simple and more social fish, gliding together in the 

 eddies and stills of moderate depth, that lie betwixt or 

 close to the streams. They spawn the beginning of 

 April, and are in best condition in autumn. 



Smelt are expert flycatchers the readiest customers 

 of the small flyfisher ; from August to the end of the 

 season the streams up the Ure are full of them. 

 They occupy the same haunts and places the old ones 

 had done before them. On fine days and low waters 

 imitations of the small lively colored aquatics of the 

 day and small hackles, with a maggot at each, cast into 

 the short runs and ripples of stony streams, are irre- 

 sistible. Towards the end of autumn they verge into 

 the deeps, where they remain until spring summonses 

 them away, when they offer good sport all along their 

 line of march to salt water. A shoal will straighten 

 the flyfisher's line at every cast, when the kicks and 

 flings of these tiny sportlings may suggest the furious 

 tugs and struggles in store for the angler, when he 

 holds at bay the full grown king of the fishes. 



The sizes and situations of the component parts of 

 an artificial fly must be the same as those of the natu- 

 ral ones, or as near as materials will allow. If a drake 

 fly be hatching, and the fishes watching and feeding 

 upon it, in order to deceive them the wings, legs, head, 

 shoulders, and body of the artificial drake must be the 

 same in sizes, situation, and outline, to those of the natu- 

 ral fly. The length of the fly gives the length of the 



