banks or oak-woods afford food for the oak-egger and fox moths, which
children call 'Devil's Gold Rings,' and Scotsmen 'Hairy Oubits.'

Two hints more about palmers. They must not be worked on the top of
the water, but used as stretchers, and allowed to sink as living
caterpillars do; and next, they can hardly be too large or rough,
provided that you have skill enough to get them into the water
without a splash. I have killed well on Thames with one full three
inches long, armed of course with two small hooks. With palmers--and
perhaps with all baits--the rule is, the bigger the bait the bigger
the fish. A large fish does not care to move except for a good
mouthful. The best pike-fisher I know prefers a half-pound chub when
he goes after one of his fifteen-pound jack; and the largest pike I
ever ran--and lost, alas!--who seemed of any weight above twenty
pounds, was hooked on a live white fish of full three-quarters of a
pound. Still, no good angler will despise the minute North-country
flies. In Yorkshire they are said to kill the large chalk trout of
Driffield as well as the small limestone and grit fish of Craven; if
so, the gentlemen of the Driffield Club, who are said to think
nothing of killing three-pound fish on midge flies and cobweb tackle,
must be (as canny Yorkshiremen are likely enough to be) the best
anglers in England.

In one spot only in Yorkshire, as far as I know, do our large chalk
flies kill: namely, in the lofty limestone tarn of Malham. There
palmers, caperers, and rough black flies, of the largest Thames and
Kennet sizes, seem the only attractive baits: and for this reason,
that they are the flies of the place. The cinnamon Phryganea comes
up abundantly from among the stones; and the large peat moss to the
west of the tarn abounds, as usual, in house-flies and bluebottles,