422 THE COMPLETE AtfaLEK. [PART IT. 



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-high 

 into the air ; though he is to be found upon flags and grass 

 too, and, indeed, everywhere 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 con- 

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

 themselves with those flies, till they purge again out of their 

 gills ; l 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-fly will murder, which is to be made thus : 

 the dubbing of bear's dun with a little brown and yellow 

 camlet very well mixed ; but so placed, that your fly may 



1 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. H. 



