THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 283 



ever they begin to put out, that he feels himself strong, (at which 

 time we call him a jack,) squeezes himself out of prison, and 

 crawls to the top of some stone, w r here, if he can find a chink 

 that will receive him, or can creep betwixt two stones, the one 

 lying hollow upon the other, (which, by the way, we also lay 

 so purposely to find them,) he there lurks till his wings be full 

 grown ; and there is your only place to find him, (and from 

 thence doubtless he derives his name ;) though, for want of such 

 convenience, he will make shift with the hollow of a bank, or 

 any other place where the wind cannot come to fetch him off. 

 His body is long, and pretty thick, and as broad at the tail 

 almost as in the middle : his colour a very fine brown, ribbed 

 with yellow, and much yellower on the belly than the back : 

 he has two or three whisks also at the tag of his tail, and two 

 little horns upon his head: his wings, when full grown, are 

 double, and flat down his back, of the same colour, but rather 

 darker than his body, and longer than it, though he makes but 

 little use of them ; for you shall rarely see him flying, though 

 often swimming and paddling with several feet he has under his 

 belly, upon the water, without stirring a wing. But the drake 

 will mount steeple-height into the air ; though he is to be found 

 upon flags and grass too, and indeed every where, high and low, 

 near the river ; there being so many of them in their season as. 

 were they not a very inoffensive insect, would look like a 

 plague : and these drakes (since I forgot to tell you before, I 

 will tell you here) are taken by the fish to that incredible degree 

 that, upon a calm day, you shall see the still deeps continually 

 all over circles by the fishes rising, who will gorge themselves 

 with those flies till they purge again out of their gills : * and the 

 Trouts are at that time so lusty and strong, that one of eight or 

 ten inches long will then more struggle and tug, and more 

 endanger your tackle, than one twice as big in winter. But 

 pardon this digression. 



This stone-fly, then, we dape or dibble with as with the 

 drake, but with this difference, that whereas the green-drake is 

 common both to stream and still, and to all hours of the day, 

 we seldom dape with this but in the streams, (for in a whistling 

 wind a made-fly, in the deep, is better,) and rarely, but early 

 and late, it not being so proper for the mid time of the day ; 

 though a great Grayling will then take it very well in a sharp 

 stream, and, here and there, a Trout, too, but much better 

 towards eight, nine, ten, or eleven, of the clock at night, at 

 which time, also, the best fish rise, and the later the better, 

 provided you can see your fly ; and when you cannot, a made 



* I have caught a Trout so full of them that, in taking him off the hook, 

 I have pressed out of his throat a lump of them as big as a walnut. 



