IN DUSK AND DARK 35 



Quills had been supplied to me as Orange Quills. That 

 was years ago, and I have the remains of the dozen still, 

 for they have never been any good to me. Again, I recall 

 one evening when I rose eighteen trout, all short, to a Tup's 

 Indispensable dressed to represent a spinner with a ruddy 

 colouring, and then, putting on a fly of identical size with 

 a body of rusty-red seal's fur, I began to get firm rises 

 immediately. This must have been something more than 

 a coincidence. 



I have had it suggested to me by a distinguished angling 

 writer, whose opinions deserve respectful consideration, 

 that trout disregard colour during the daytime, but dis- 

 tinguish it at night. While accepting the latter proposi- 

 tion, I do not accept the former, though I do not profess 

 to understand how they see colour under either condition. 



It might seem bold to express the opinion that they 

 distinguish textures at night, seeing that they undoubtedly 

 take confections of feathers, silk, and fur for natural flies; 

 but I think it clear that at times they evince at night a 

 preference for artificial flies of one texture of body or wing 

 rather than another, such as herl, rather than quill, or vice 

 versa, as indeed they do by day. For instance, the difference 

 between landrail and starling dyed to landrail colour is 

 not very obvious to any but the trained eye of the fly 

 dresser, but I have known trout reject the sedge fly winged 

 with dyed starling and greedily accept an exactly similar 

 pattern winged with landrail. Again, it is well known 

 that an Iron-blue nymph hackled with the blue-black 

 feather from the throat of a jackdaw will be accepted 

 freely when a fly hackled with an apparently identical 

 hackle from the crest or other part of the same bird will 

 be contemptuously ignored. In the same way the Water- 

 hen Bloa must be hackled with a feather from one par- 

 ticular row of feathers from under the waterhen's wing — 



