And thy career is done.
Thou sportest in the evening beam,
An hour, an age to thee,
In gaity above the stream,
Which soon thy grave shall be.
Borton Wilford.
THE FLESH FLY.
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.