FLY FISHING FOR TROUT AND GRAYLING. 285 
particular wing feather and a body of a particular colour renders 
their combination irresistible to the trout in so many lochs of 
the most dissimilar character. Still less can I tell why in one 
loch there is a standing fwvore for smooth silken bodies, in 
another for rough mohair and swine’s down of the identical 
colours. Yet I have seen this deliberate preference for one or 
the other material proved beyond a doubt again and again. 
These and the like problems continually recur, and contribute 
to make fly fishing the intellectual amusement that many wise 
and observing men have found it. At the same time they 
warn us to beware of sweeping generalisations, and to gather 
our facts from a great variety of sources, ere we generalise at 
all. It is certainly curious that a dear relative, whom I 
‘coached’ in the rudiments of fly fishing ere he became himself 
an authority on the subject, lays his qualified rejection of the 
‘imitative’ theory at my door. I recommended to him my 
three favourite lake flies for use on a Scotch tour, and he found 
them so effective that he had them reproduced in various 
miniature forms for general use, and has certainly killed fish 
with them in waters where, from my own experience, I should 
have trusted to a very different cast. This, I admit, is curious; 
but it does not really affect the argument. To give it any 
logical weight we must beg the question of less or more; must 
assume that the system which was not tried would not have 
proved comparatively successful. 
With this remark—which furnishes an answer to many fly 
fishers whose practice is better than their theory—I may dismiss 
this first of piscatorial cruces. 
Having been for many years the willing victim of numerous 
applications for pattern flies on the part of friends, acquaintances, 
and even strangers bound for this or that fishing district, and 
having in a great majority of cases received the thanks of those 
who consulted me for the success of my prescriptions, I may be 
forgiven if I claim to speak with such authority as is due to 
long experience on the subject of Trout Flies for lake and river. 
For lake trout I have found, as already stated, that a very few 
