Fisn Pumosopuy EVOLVED. 183 
dam, and ever and anon, as one fell on the water, a trout 
rose very gracefully and swallowed it, turning quickly down, 
and causing a whirl made by his caudal train, which had so 
excited me when I first looked upon the pool. With assidu- 
ity I commenced examining my flies in search of an ash 
midge. Isoon founda pair, and, placing one on as my stretch- 
er, the first cast I made with it fastened a three-pound trout, 
played and landed it. The next cast I fastened another, but 
so slightly that the hook parted from his mouth. Two or 
three more casts assured me that the shoal “smelt a rat;” 
and as minks, muskrats, and flies with hooked tails are their 
terror, I adjourned to another pool, and did not return to the 
dam until nearly night, when I took the conceit out of four 
more beauties; but, after playing the fifth nearly half an hour, 
he made a rush for the rapids, and went over the chute, car- 
rying away my casting-line. Having captured five, and 
played two more trout that day, I felt satisfied. T had for 
years contended that trout might be taken with artificial fly 
when in feeding humor, but I had never before found them so 
fastidious or discriminative. Since then, Mr. James Stephens, 
of Hoboken, and myself, hired a trout-pond in Connecticut, 
and though I fished it three days, and Mr. Stephens three 
weeks, yet neither of us succeeded in capturing one with the 
fly. Neither would they take a minnow, while they rose 
freely to angle and grub worms, cast, without sinker, as a fly. 
On the last day of my visit to the pond I saw the trout rush- 
ing furiously after tadpoles; but, as I had not time to re- 
main and try that bait, I probably lost a treat, for I have 
since heard that it is the favorite lure for trout in some parts 
of the state. Indeed, the fish-culturists of France propagate 
frogs, that the trout may feed on tadpoles. 
The angler, on making a lengthy tour for sport, can not 
have too great a number or variety of artificial flies. He can 
procure them at the principal fishing-tackle establishments 
in New York, where competition has so sharpened invention 
and enterprise that the best flies and fly-tiers are imported, 
