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APRIL. 



FLIES. Numbers of new flies are now added to those 

 of the last two months, as may be seen in the list, and 

 the whole of them are on the water more or less every 

 fine day. The needle, dark, light, and red brown ; the 

 Royal Charlie, the blue and brown drake, and the 

 light and freckled dun, are the leaders of the aquatic 

 tribes, and well known to the fish. Any part of them 

 may be fished when hatching, or such as may appear 

 most numerous, and are taken by the fishes, with or 

 without the black silver, or golden hackle. 



The maggots preserved over last winter are now 

 valuable for smelting.* It is the time of the annual 

 migration of the young salmon, when every smelt that 

 wears the blue badge, in every part of the Ure, is in 

 motion, wending its way downward to salt water. 



* Smelting- in the Ure is coeval with small flyfishing 1 , as it most likely is 

 in all trout and grayling 1 streams where salmon come up to spawn. The 

 smelt are natives of the same streams as trout and grayling 1 , and the food 

 and haunts of the three fish are so nearly similar, as well as the baits, that 

 the best anglers cannot separate them if they would ; but, when fishing for 

 one, will unavoidably take the other. In spring and autumn, when a dish 

 of young salmon may companion the leveret or the lamb, smelting is fair 

 angling, so long as the smelts continue in the trout and grayling streams, 

 where the salmon fly is of no use. The smelt are the young of the salmon 

 and salmon trout of various sizes, from two or three to twenty or thirty 

 pounds weight, and their produce each year, the salmon smelts, vary much 

 in their size, but all have the firger marks on the sides and the blue tinge, the 

 badge of the salmon, in the spring of their departure. It is the opinion of 

 some observing craft, that the smelt is two and a half years in Jresh water : 

 the first year after being spawned their growth is to about the size of a 

 minnow ; in the autumn of the second year we fish for them; during the 

 following winter they acquire the blue tinge ; in the spring take their de- 

 parture, and summer in the salt water. This opinion' is founded on the 

 frequent opportunities in summer of seeing the yearlings in low clear 



