THE NATURAL FLY NECESSARY. 145 



Let us see what induces us to have recourse to 

 a sport less exciting than artificial fly-fishing and 

 more troublesome. Necessity is the mother of 

 substitutes. When the artificial fly becomes next 

 to useless, it is necessary to substitute the natural 

 one, or something else. The weather is fine, hot, 

 and breezeless ; the water placid ; the May-fly, or 

 other insects, are abundant on its surface, and fish 

 of various sorts are stealthily rising, causing 

 eddies, the Scylla, Charybdis, and Maelstrom of 

 those reckless navigators, the ephemera and other 

 water-loving tribes. You see what the fish are 

 about. You guess that your artificial fly will not 

 beguile them, and you therefore flee for help to 

 the natural one, making it effective by an artificial 

 sting you add to it. The addition of this sting 

 requires attention. It must be so added as to 

 harm as little as may be the living insect. The 

 less it harms it, the more harmful it will be to fish. 

 Besides, there are places, no matter how favour- 

 able the weather may be, so opposed to facile 

 throwing with the artificial fly, that you must 

 substitute dropping or dipping with the natural 

 insect. You will see large fish rising under 

 bushes, and branches of trees overhanging the 

 water, from under shelving banks and rocks, and 

 in divers difficult spots where the artificial fly 

 cannot be safely cast, and a moments thought 



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