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I almost prefer the dark claret-spinner, with which I have killed very large fish alternately with the green-drake, even when it was quite dark; and for your stretcher, of course a green-drake. For a blustering evening like this your drake can hardly be too large or too rough; in brighter and stiller weather the fish often prefer a fly half the size of the natural one.
Now put your Green-drake on; and throw, regardless of bank-fishing or any other rule, wherever you see a fish rise. Do not work your flies in the least, but let them float down over the fish, or sink if they will; he is more likely to take them under water than on the top.
The trout have not yet got thoroughly accustomed to the green-drake, and the "Durby day" will not be here for a week. On arriving at the spot at which we intend commencing operations, it is evident that the rise has begun. Happily, everything was in readiness. Our tapered gut cast has been wetted, and a tiny-eyed fly is at the end. The gut nearest the hook is as fine as gut can possibly be.
Add to these plenty of minnow, stone-loach, and miller's thumbs, a second course of young crayfish, and for one gormandizing week of bliss, thousands of the great green-drake fly: and you have food enough for a stock of trout which surprise, by their size and number, an angler fresh from the mountain districts of the north and west.
After the "green-drake" has lived his short life and disappeared, there is a lull in the fishing, and the sportsman may with advantage take himself off to London to see the Oxford and Cambridge cricket match. All through July and August, when the water gets low and clear, the best and largest fish may be taken from an hour before sunset up to eleven o'clock at night by the red palmer.
The lovely green-drake generally appears on the Windrush about this time, and then for ten days nobody thinks or talks about anything else. Who that has ever witnessed a real may-fly "rise" on a chalk or limestone stream will deny that it is one of the most beautiful and interesting sights in all creation?
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