316 SALMON AND TROUT. 
of Salmo Thymallus, contrasts agreeably with the ancient and 
fish-like smell which clings to other finny captives. 
For the table, I should place a well-grown grayling in 
autumn or winter above the average of river trout, while the 
‘ shetts,’ or two-year-olds, are in season all the summer through, 
and if judiciously fried are nearly equal to a smelt in flavour. 
Cotton is in a measure right when he calls him ‘the deadest- 
hearted of fishes,’ making ‘no great stir’ on the hook. He 
bores steadily down toward the gravel, working mostly up 
stream, but rarely making a sudden rush or attempting to weed 
himself. Yet even this dispraise needs some qualification. In 
small streams I have several times encountered grayling who 
fought for their lives with all the dash as well as the dogged- 
ness of lusty trout, though I have never met with the like ina 
large river. I might make a fair guess at the cause of this 
difference, but prefer to record the simple fact. 
I have seldom fished for grayling with any lure but the 
artificial fly. To me, indeed, the crown of all fly fishing is a 
bright breezy day on the Teme or Lug about the middle of 
August, when the grayling are coming on and the trout not yet 
gone off. The sport is varied but almost continuous ; there is 
seldom a reach to be ‘skipped’ on your river-side beat. From 
the dashing rapid haunted by trout you ascend to the steadily 
running ford, from two to four feet deep, in which you know 
that the grayling lie thick—‘ not single spies, but in battalions.’ 
At the top of this again you come on a deep pool, with foam- 
flecked eddies where the trout reassume their sway, while on 
the confines of these different reaches you may hook either 
trout or grayling or both together. A brace of the former with 
one of the latter, or vce versd, make rather an exciting compli- 
cation. 
This delightful chapter of ‘dual’ captures ends with the 
first week of September ; but there still remains a good spell of 
grayling fishing pur et simple. They draw together more and 
more in the quiet fords, and feed more boldly and continuously, 
