REALISM v. IDEALISM 135 



useful to the angler. There are scores of flies which are set 

 down in lists, and which are perpetuated from list to list, 

 being copied from one to the other like the celebrated 

 " Hampstead Eye " butterfly, of which there is only a legend 

 of a solitary specimen but which are by no means to be 

 generally relied upon. Such flies I shall have nothing to do 

 with. 



There are two conflicting systems, in support of which we 

 find warm partisans and good anglers on either side, viz. the 

 entomological and what may be termed the colorological 

 system, or those who study and imitate nature as closely as 

 possible and those who say " the day is bright and the water 

 clear, or the day is cloudy and the water coloured, and there- 

 fore such and such colours ought to kill." I shall touch upon 

 their respective merits and claims. Throughout the kingdom 

 thousands of trout flies are in use, and almost any fly or insect 

 which can fall upon the water will at times, if it be little fished, 

 be taken by the trout. On the other hand, the reverse of this 

 is more often true, and the trout are picksome and hard to 

 please. It will often, too, occur, when trout are feeding strongly 

 upon a particular fly, that they will take something entirely 

 different in preference to a bad imitation of the insect they are 

 feeding on, or even a fair imitation put over them in a some- 

 what different way from those which are passing over them, 

 because the one does not challenge comparison while the other 

 does, from which the colorologists argue that it is not necessary 

 to trouble your head with considerations of what is on the 

 water. But there are times, again, when the fish will be rising 

 furiously, and the angler may exhaust his tackle book over 

 them without getting a rise if he has not the exact fly. I could 

 cite hundreds of instances of this. I mention only one, the most 

 recent I can call to mind. 



Last season I was fishing the Itchin, at Bishopstoke ; it was 

 getting towards dusk, the fish came on to rise very rapidly, fly 

 after fly did I try, in the very thickest of the boils, covering 

 half a dozen fish at every cast ; every likely fly I could think of 

 was tried and rejected, and not a single rise could I get ; the 

 fly they were rising at was a very small one, but, small as it was, 

 they knew perfectly well the difference between it and others 

 of the same size, even though it was evening. By great 

 difficulty I got one of the flies, and saw it was a red spinner. 

 I was able to find a red spinner without much trouble, and in 

 less than twenty minutes I had two and a half brace of fine fish, 



