Fancy Flies, Wet and Dry 



ephemeridse. Slight differences in color 

 are not liable to startle the fish, per- 

 haps, especially when it has only a 

 momentary glimpse of the flies as they 

 float over it. If the color of the body — 

 a body wrapped with gold tinsel, for 

 instance — marks the prominent point 

 of difiference, it may be that this vari- 

 ation in color will serve merely to at- 

 tract the attention of the fish after it 

 has been sated with food of more 

 sombre coloring, without having a ten- 

 dency to startle it. It has many times 

 been observed by dry-fly anglers that 

 after they had tried without success 

 many of their reliable patterns that 

 were exact imitations, a fancy pattern 

 would succeed in bringing about the 

 desired result of raising the trout. But 

 even so, it seems to me that there is a 

 vast difference between the possible ex- 

 planations of the success of fancy pat- 



[177]. 



