And now to go through our list, beginning with -
1. The caperer.
This perhaps is the best of all flies; it is certainly the one which
will kill earliest and latest in the year; and though I would hardly
go as far as a friend of mine, who boasts of never fishing with
anything else, I believe it will, from March to October, take more
trout, and possibly more grayling, than any other fly. Its basis is
the woodcock wing; red hackle legs, which should be long and pale;
and a thin mohair body, of different shades of red-brown, from a dark
claret to a pale sandy. It may thus, tied of different sizes, do
duty for half-a-dozen of the commonest flies; for the early claret
(red-brown of Ronalds; a Nemoura, according to him), which is the
first spring-fly; for the red spinner, or perfect form of the March-
brown ephemera; for the soldier, the soft-winged reddish beetle which
haunts the umbelliferous flowers, and being as soft in spirit as in
flesh, perpetually falls into the water, and comes to grief therein;
and last but not least, for the true caperers, or whole tribe of
Phryganidae, of which a sketch was given just now.
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