178 Fly Fish ing for Grayling . 



I have lost many a fine fish at the last struggle, 

 from the small fly coming away from its hold. 



Izaak Walton, who had fished for grayling when 

 on his visit to Cotton, calls him a dainty fish, 

 " is very gamesome at the fly, and is much sim- 

 pler, and therefore bolder, than the trout," and 

 he winds up his remarks by saying, " yet he is not 

 so general a fish as the trout, nor to me so good 

 to eat or to angle." And Cotton, living on the 

 banks of the Dove, says that this fish is one of 

 the deadest hearted fishes in the world, and the 

 bigger he is the more easily taken. Are the gray- 

 ling of the Teme or the Test different in their 

 nature to those of the Dove ? 



From whatever cause it may be, probably from 

 better food and larger water, the grayling of the 

 Test, the Avon, and the Itchin grow larger than 

 those of the rivers (the grayling rivers) of the 

 midland counties. A three or four pound grayling 

 in the Dove, the Wye, or the Teme is a rarity a 

 great rarity; in the rivers of Hampshire they are 

 not at all uncommon. My chief experience in this 

 delightful sport has been on the Teme at Leint- 

 wardine, which I fished every September and Octo- 

 ber for sixteen years, and glorious sport it was, 

 although chequered by days of flood and drought 

 when fly-fishing was impossible. From the great 

 floods in winter, and from the peculiar soil, no river 



