i68 
NATURE NOTES. 
coloured, it is a blue (grey) fly. No. 6 when the black clumsy 
flies with long-hanging, unjointed-looking legs are on the water, 
about June, only then. 
The blue upright has its counterpart in nature, there being a 
fly tolerably like. The march brown is also a fair representation 
of life. The red palmer or “ cock-a-bondhu ” is like, or supposed 
to be like, a well-known beetle which sometimes abounds on the 
bracken. The black palmer’s prototype I have already spoken 
of ; it should have silver tinsel round the body. I suppose the 
infallible and silver twist are intended to represent the same fly 
as the blue upright. 
All the above are hackle flies. The list might be reduced to 
five by striking out the infallible. I generally use two flies a 
little more than a yard apart. I never use the finest gut, it is 
difficult to cast and loses many fish. The famous May fly, of 
which such capital representations are made by the tackle manu- 
facturers, is little seen in South Devon. 
But I am digressing. I said my object was not to teach how to 
catch trout ; those who want to learn had better stand a proper 
distance from an old fisherman and watch him at his work, and 
at leisure read Stewart’s Practical Angler. 
Again, a fisherman will be a geologist. As he treads the river’s 
bank he will notice that the bed of the stream is composed of 
different rocks ; at one place the water will run over slate, and 
here the trout will have light coloured scales ; far away on the 
moor fish will be found in pools and holes in peat bogs, here they 
will be almost pitch black, but where there is granite bottom 
there will the coat of the trout shine in its full lustre of many 
colours. 
The habits of trout will specially be studied ; they rise and are 
caught often in stickles where the water is rough and swift, and 
ignorant people would think that the fish lie there. Not so ; 
the fisherman knows to a nicety where fish are, if they were 
in the stickle they would be tired to death with perpetually 
swimming against the current. The food of the fish comes down 
the stickle all night through, but the fish lies a little to one side 
behind the shelter of some stone or other protection where the 
water is still and he has only slightly to move his fins to keep 
him in his place. In consequence of this the eyes of the fish are 
so set that he looks upwards and sideways somewhat, indeed, I 
do not myself believe that a trout can see straight in front of him. 
A noticeable thing about trout is the way the largest fish will 
possess himself of the best place in each pool for getting food ; 
the angler thus knows always where to find the best fish. When 
one gets the best fish out of the pool, he is soon replaced by the 
next fish in size in the neighbourhood. 
Fish have the remarkable power of ejecting readily and with 
great force objects that get into their mouths that they do not 
relish and do not wish to swallow. Fishing for perch with a worm 
or grub this is soon seen, for when the fish is taken, one finds 
