112 ARTIFICIAL FLIES. 
he is very cunning and acute in seeing and avoiding dan- 
ger. In colored or clearing waters he will oft run great 
risks, when it is evident he is aware of danger. He will 
cut away the tail-end of your minnow or strip it off the 
tackle, and adroitly avoid the hooks; or if struck, his des- 
perate blast to dislodge them oft sends the minnow several 
inches up the gut, and his game and struggles are those of 
the salmon tribes. He will feint and gambol with your fly 
or bait, and dash it with his tail; but the artful dodger has 
been stayed by the tenacious hook in his slippery side. 
After rapacious nights he grounds himself alone in his 
haunts by the side of a stone until roused on his fins again 
by the flutter of the new-hatched flies above his head. He 
then takes no notice of the minnows, or the minnows of 
him, save giving him way as he moves, like other inferiors. 
When the fly he selects comes in good plenty he refuses all 
others, until he is satisfied or the supplies cease. Such is 
the trout— the most beautiful, cunning, and courageous of 
all the finny tenantry of the streams—the leading customer 
of the small flyfisher, with whom he has to deal in open 
day, and mostly in clear water; and for whom he must 
assimulate his wares to such as are issuing on the market 
from nature’s storehouses, and are in immediate request. 
Grayling rise boldly and freely at the top food of the 
season, and often give capital sport to the flyfisher. They 
have their choice and favorite flies, but are not so tenacious 
or scrupulous as the trout; they are a more simple and 
more social fish, gliding together in the eddies and stills of 
moderate depth, that lie betwixt or close to the streams. 
They spawn the beginning of April, and are in best con- 
dition in autumn. 
Smelt are expert flycatchers—the readiest customers of 
the small flyfisher ; from August to the end of the season 
the streams up the Ure are full of them. They occupy the 
same haunts and places the old ones had done before them. 
On fine days and low waters imitations of the small lively 
