And two or three large palmers, red, grizzled, and coch-a-bonddhu, each
with a tuft of red floss silk at the tail. These are enough to show
sport from March to October; and also like enough to certain natural
flies to satisfy the somewhat dull memory of a trout.
But beyond this list there is little use in roaming, as far as my
experience goes. A yellow dun kills sometimes marvellously on
chalk-streams, and always upon rocky ones. 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
ephemeræ. But, did you ever see large fish rise at these ephemeræ? 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 Bætis, 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.