98 TROUT FISHING 



basket, for quality, that I ever achieved in that 

 small river. The sixteen compared favourably with 

 the threes and fives that the other anglers produced 

 at tea time. And it was all due to a fly which I 

 should never have dreamed of putting on had I 

 not been dispirited and unwell. 



I can remember a somewhat similar surprise on 

 the Kennet a good many years ago. This was due 

 to a red spinner. Your red spinner is a good fly 

 and a pretty, but for dry-fly work it should observe 

 certain conventions. This specimen did not. It 

 had a drooping whisk of soft hackle set rather askew, 

 and a pair of towering massive wings. It dated from 

 the days when professional fly-dressers (or some of 

 them) used to say to themselves, " Ha, a dry fly ! 

 That usually has double wings. Let us treble them 

 that it may hum in the air the better and bounce 

 upon the water." Adding just a memory of hen 

 hackle to make the creature fly-like, they issued 

 it to the unsuspecting, who assumed that a dry fly 

 owed its dryness to its bulk of wing. Such was the 

 red spinner which I tied on for the usual reason 

 that I could do no good with anything else. And 

 such was the red spinner which, floating sideways 

 or upside down, secured me two brace of good trout 

 that had refused all kinds of properly dressed flies. 



Incidents of this kind are no doubt common to 

 the experience of every fly fisher, and they seem to 



