There is no need to rush off to Mr. Farlow and buy up his stock of may-flies; for though he does not tie his own flies, our angling friend has a goodly stock of them neatly arranged in rows of cork inside a black tin box; and, depend upon it, they are the right ones.

Many a fisherman goes through a lifetime without getting the right flies for the water on which he angles.  It is ten to one that those in the shops are too light, both in the body and the wing; the may-flies usually sold are likewise much too big.  About half life-size is quite big enough for the artificial fly, and as a general rule they cannot be too dark.

Some years ago we caught a live fly, and took it up to London for the shopman to copy.  “At last,” we said to ourselves, “we have got the right thing.”  But not a bit of it.  The first cast on to the water showed us that the fly was utterly wrong.  It was far too light.  The fact is, the insect itself appears very much darker on the water than it does in the air.  But the artificial fly shows ten times lighter as it floats on the stream than it does in the shop window.

Dark mottled grey for your wings, and a brown hackle, with a dark rather than a straw-coloured body, is the kind of fly we find most killing on the upper Coln.  Of course it may be different on other streams, but I suspect there is a tendency to use too light a fly everywhere, save among those who have learnt by experience how to catch trout.  As Sir Herbert Maxwell has proved by experiment, trout have no perception of colour except so far as the fly is light or dark.  He found dark blue and red flies just as killing as the ordinary may-fly.

For the dry-fly fisherman equipment is half the battle.  Show me the man who catches fish; ten to one his rod is well balanced and strong, his line heavy, though tapered, and his gut well selected and stained.  The fly-book stamps the fisherman even more truly than the topboot stamps the fox-hunter.  Nor does the accomplished expert with the dry fly disdain with fat of deer to grease his line, nor with paraffin to dress his fly and make it float.  But he keeps the paraffin in a leather case by itself, so that his coat may not remain redolent for months.  From top to toe he is a fisherman.  His boots are thick, even though he does not require waders; on his knees are leather pads to ward off rheumatism; whilst on his head is a sober-coloured cap—­not a white straw hat flashing in the sunlight, and scaring the timid trout to death.

Thus appears our sportsman of the Inner Temple not twelve hours after we saw him stewing in his London chambers.  What a metamorphosis is this!  Just as the may-fly, after two years of confinement as a wretched grub in the muddy bed of the stream, throws off its shackles, gives its wings a shake, and soars into the glorious June atmosphere, happy to be free, so does the poor caged bird rejoice, after grubbing for an indefinite period in a cramped cell,