Wild Sports in Ireland

ies are the prey of certain speckled fish, which no sooner see them settling on the water than they glide gently beneath, and, before the hippurus is aware, snap at and earry him as suddenly 'tinder the water as an eagle will seize and bear aloft a goose from a farmyard, or a wolf take a sheep from its fold." .cELIAN. " The great month of the year, for the bwigler, is May And his fly the green drake?if 'tis out, that's to say, Then the trout catch themselves, so insatiate their lust, And success is no question o/may, but o/must." COTSWOLD Isys. CHAPTER III. IN CLONOOLIA BAY. On many of the large Irish lakes, the only legitimate methods of angling for trout are trolling in the early spring, and dapping with the green Drake, better known in England as the Mayfly, in May and June. No portion of the many months I spent on Lough Derg was more pleasant than the period during which both fish and birds revelled in their annual banquet on Ephemera vulgaris. Casting in the usual way with the artificial fly seemed next to useless, and this may be owing not to scarcity of the trout, but to their knowledge? by no means inconsiderable?of the many varieties of flies which are dragged over the lake twenty and thirty at a time, by persons fishing with otters and cross lines. On cross lines the trout hook themselves or not at all ; consequently, for one that is caught, many are pricked, and the result is a very natural distrust by the fish of anything composed of fur ...