ON DIBBING OR DAPING.

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CHAPTER VI.

FISHING WITH THE NATURAL FLY, OR DIBBING OR DAPING.

ANGLING with the natural fly is an appropriate summer pastime, and would not be deemed too laborious by even lazzaroni. It fatigues no muscles, for all the action it requires from them is neat gentle motion. It abhors violence, and is totally suaviter in modo. It is a pastime for ladies; for musing listless adolescents; and for the corpulent middle-aged, whose former sharp gusto for active sports frequent pectoral lining with good capon has blunted. If it make no calls on the big muscles, it asks activity from the eye and watchfulness from the brain; it requires from the fingers great delicacy of touch, and from the arm the gentlest sort of action. Your object in practising it is to drop a natural fly, fixed on your hook, so gently on the water that the descent will not differ from that of the free living insect. The fly with the hook in it must alight as naturally as if it were one fingers had never touched. To cause it to do so is not very easy; it demands careful guiding and dropping, and sometimes the most finished casting.

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WHY WE DIB OR DAPE.

Let us see what induces us to have recourse to a sport less exciting than artificial fly-fishing, and more troublesome. Necessity is the mother of substitutes. When the artificial fly becomes next to useless, it is necessary to substitute the natural one, or something else. The weather is fine, hot, and breezeless; the water placid; the May-fly, or other insects, are abundant on its surface; and fish of various sorts are stealthily rising, causing eddies-the Scylla, Charybdis, and Maelström of those reckless navigators, the ephemera, and other water-loving tribes. You see what the fish are about you guess that your artificial fly will not beguile them, and you therefore flee for help to the natural one, making it effective by an artificial sting you add to it. The addition of this sting requires attention; it must be so added as to harm as little as may be the living insect. The less it harms it, the more harmful it will be to fish. Besides, there are places, no matter how favourable the weather may be, so opposed to facile throwing with the artificial fly, that you must substitute dropping or dipping with the natural insect. You will see large fish rising under bushes and branches of trees overhanging the water, from under shelving banks and rocks, and in divers difficult spots where the artificial fly cannot be safely cast; and a moment's thought will tell you that the best way to reach these

BAITING WITH THE LIVE FLY.

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sheltered fish will be by the cunning use of a living insect.

The first thing you have to learn is the best way to insert your hook in the insect, so as to injure it and impede its natural motions as slightly as possible. There must be no roughness employed in the operation. The insect must be handled tenderly, and the hook inserted so as not to puncture any mortal part of your frail bait. If you use but one fly, insert the hook under one of its wings, bringing it out between them at the back. If you use two flies, carry the hook through the upper part of the corset between both wings of one fly; and then, taking another with its head reversed, let the hook enter under one of its wings, and come out at its back. This double head-totail bait is a very good one. If you are fishing in open water, with a breeze blowing, your winchline must be of floss-silk, and your foot-line of about a yard of very fine gut, or of a couple of long links of horsehair. Without casting, and by keeping the breeze to your back, holding up your rod and letting out your blow-line, you can easily manage to make the wind carry it to the spots where you see fish rising. When you dip beneath bushes, your ordinary silk and hair winchline will do, with a foot-line of gut. By twirling in your hand your rod, twist as much line about its top-pieces as you want; and then, inserting its

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BEST TIME FOR DIBBING.

point through the branches, as far as requisite, twirl it round reversely so as to uncoil your line and to drop your natural bait gently on the water. You can cast or throw the natural fly, but not so well as the artificial one.

Use a long rather stiff rod, with a long taper casting-line, long enough to use without having much of your winch-line out. Cast with a gentle motion of the forearm, bringing round your line softly; avoiding anything like whipping-violence, and making your bait float on to the surface of the water. Where the river runs uniformly narrow, use no winch, but attach your casting-line to the top joint of your rod, and you will be able to throw, without whipping off your bait.

The drake season, that is, the season of the May-fly, from the middle of May to the end of June, is the best period for dibbing, and the May-fly is the best of all baits. We insert on the opposite page a cut of an angler intent on this sort of sport: you see how he hides himself, and how deftly he has dropped in his hook and line between the branches.

At the period just mentioned, dibbing with the May-fly is quite a rage in the midland counties. We have then seen the Dove, and other streams of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, swarming with the May-fly, and their banks thronged with anglers of all ages and sexes, dibbing with

it. Trout and grayling will scarcely take any other bait. They gorge themselves with the Mayfly, and thrive admirably on the nourishment it affords. When towards evening fish are satiated with the May-fly, they will eagerly take, by way of change, house-flies and moths.

In dibbing you must keep out of sight of the fish, and cause as little disturbance as possible. You will observe that trout do not jump briskly at the May-fly, but rise at it noiselessly, suck it in, and swallow it; and that they take that fly generally as it is fluttering on the surface of the water, preparatory to flight. They take it so, but they frequently take other flies just as they