THE LIST OF FLIES, 
FEBRUARY. 
THE feathered choristers resume their song—the starved 
trout begins to stir as winter retires, and he courts the 
genial currents—grayling glide in the calms, and smelt 
abide in the deeps. Few are the flies and short the inter- 
vals of flyfishing during the days of February-—an hour or 
two before, and after noon, opens and closes the sport for 
the day; and often for days,.and sometimes the whole 
month, the weather and water forbid flyfishing. 
lst.—THE NzEDLE Brown.'—Full length,* a quarter 
to a quarter and one-sixteenth ; length, short of a quarter, 
(1) This fly is a great favourite of mine during the early spring and autumn 
months; it would be a most valuable auxiliary to the flyfisher if it could be accur- 
ately imitated, but owing to its diminutive size, this is by no means an easy task, 
The author is far more explicit in his description of the fly itself, than he is in the 
mode of dressing it, his term, “‘fine fleshy grizzled hair,” being very ambiguous, 
although I have no doubt that he knew perfectly well himself what was intended 
by the expression, Mr, Francis has on several occasions written at some length 
upon the merits of this fly, and in his Book on Angling gives the following pattern, 
with which I have killed a good many grayling on both the Yore and Wharfe—all 
depends however on the fly being dressed very neat and fine. Body, a fine shred 
from the yellowish quill of a thrush’s wing ; legs, a grizzled blue dun cock’s hackle ; 
under wings, starling's feather, used sparingly, and above them two fine slips of hen 
blackbird’s wing. The late James Ogden, of Cheltenham, who was a veteran angler, 
sent me, about three or four years ago, some patterns of this fly, which he had copied, 
from nature, and very excellent imitations they were. Jackson alludes to it as the 
small Willow Fly. Wade, in Halcyon, styles it the Spanish Needle, but Ronald’s, in 
his standard work on Flies, does not mention it at all; it kills wellin September and 
October, when I prefer it dressed hacklewise with a feather from inside of a snipe’s 
wing, using yellow silk, with a little mole’s fur for body. | 
x “Full length” is the length from the nose to the ends of the folded wings, 
where they lie close over the back like the stone fly, &c.,and extend beyond the end 
of the body. 
“Length” is the length of the flies in parts of an inch, measured from the 
extremity of the face or nose to the end of the body. 
Cc 
