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The Practical Angler; or, The Art of Trout-fishing
The Practical Angler or The Art of Troutfishing Author:W. C. Stewart Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. FLIES, FLY-DRESSING, ETC. HE practice of using artificial flies has undoubtedly had its origin in the necessity for imitating insects which... more » cannot be used in their natural state. From the first rude attempt at fly-making of some ingenious angler, the art has gone on progressing, the number of imitations always increasing, and the prevalent opinion always being that, in order to fish successfully, the angler must use an imitation of one or other of the natural insects on the water at the time. In spite of the exertions of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Stoddart to inculcate an opposite theory, this opinion is still held by the great majority of anglers in Scotland, while in England it is all but universal. Anglers holding these views rejoice in the possession of as many different varieties of flies as would stock a fishing-book, all of which they consider imitations of so many real insects, and classify under the heads of the different months when these ODD NOTIONS RESPECTING FLIES. 77 appear. They have a fly for the morning, another for noon, and another for the evening of every day in the year, and spend a great deal of-time in taking off one fly, because it is a shade too dark, and a second because it is a shade too light, and a third to give place to the imitation of some insect which has just made its appearance on the water. During the summer months it is supposed that the varieties of insects are reckoned by the thousand, and we have seen several dozens of different kinds on the water at one time, all of which are greedily devoured by the trout. Those anglers who think trout will take no fly unless it is an exact imitation of some one of the immense number of flies they are feeding on, must suppose that they know to a shade the colour of every fly on th...« less