A Turkey-brown ephemera, the
wing made of the bright brown tail of the cock partridge, will, even
just after the May-fly is off, show good sport in the forenoon, when
he is on the water; and so will in the evening the claret spinner, to
which he turns. Excellent patterns of these flies may be found in
Ronalds: but, after all, they are uncertain flies; and, as Harry
Verney used to say, 'they casualty flies be all havers;' which
sentence the reader, if he understands good Wessex, can doubtless
translate for himself.
And there are evenings on which the fish take greedily small
transparent ephemerae. But, did you ever see large fish rise at
these ephemerae? And even if you did, can you imitate the natural
fly? And after all, would it not be waste of time? For the
experience of many good fishers is, that trout rise at these delicate
duns, black gnats, and other microscopic trash, simply faute de
mieux. They are hungry, as trout are six days in the week, just at
sunset. A supper they must have, and they take what comes; but if
you can give them anything better than the minute fairy, compact of
equal parts of glass and wind, which naturalists call an Ephemera or
Baetis, it will be most thankfully received, if there be ripple
enough on the water (which there seldom is on a fine evening) to hide
the line: and even though the water be still, take boldly your
caperer or your white moth (either of them ten times as large as what
the trout are rising at), hurl it boldly into a likely place, and let
it lie quiet and sink, not attempting to draw or work it; and if you
do not catch anything by that means, comfort yourself with the
thought that there are others who can.
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