The Flesh-fly, when the water is low and clear, is one of the most
alluring flies that can be offered to the Trout, but great skill, care,
and judgment are requisite in the use of it; in the hands of an expert
angler, on a close hot day during the month of July, it is a sure and
certain adjunct towards filling a pannier. The fish will take it when
they will not look at an artificial; you will take as large fish with
it as are to be had with any kind of fly, either natural or artificial.
The flies are easily procured in shady places, in woods or fields,
where cattle and horses have left recently made soil. After having
struck them with a bundle of twigs and killed, or stunned, as many as
will answer your purpose, put them into a horn, or anything suitable,
so that they do not escape. Your cast line must be of a length
proportioned to the size of the river or brook where you fish, as a
general rule (if you wade in the water), about a little longer than the
length of your rod,--let your cast line be exceedingly fine, and have
attached to it three-quarters of a yard of the finest round silk-worm
gut,--your hook should be No. 2, put your fly on by inserting the point
of the hook under the head of the fly, and running it through the body,
bringing it out at the tail--you need not make above two or three casts
at a place, and follow the same rule as with the May-fly, viz., to let
the fish turn his head downwards before you strike. Streams are the
likeliest places where they have not time to scan the fly, in that
curiously suspicious and shy manner in which they generally come to it
in smooth water. However when they are in the humour they will take it
anywhere if you can only contrive to keep out of sight, _hie labor
hoc opus est_; this is the trouble and difficulty in a low water;
and note, it is not worth while attempting to fish with the Flesh Fly
on cold windy days, let the water be in ever such fine condition. Trout
take this fly best when the temperature ranges somewhere about seventy
Farenheit. This fly is often taken when the May-fly is refused.