THE FLY QUESTION 101 



are chiefly of the fancy pattern kind. Some startHng 

 new fly will often succeed very well, noticeably well, 

 for a time, but in due course it loses its magic and 

 becomes no better than one of the dozen or so of 

 general patterns which are generally worth trying. 

 Blagdon Lake has known several ups and downs 

 in fashion of this sort. 



But I have little doubt that, generally speaking, 

 there is considerable merit in something new in fly 

 fishing for trout, and that an angler who finds him- 

 self at a loss on some occasion would do well to try 

 the effect of it. Of covu'se the novelty need not 

 consist in purely fancy attributes. There is a much 

 more effective kind of novelty in an attempt to copy 

 a natural fly by some new method, or in the use of 

 some material for body or wrings which has not often 

 been seen on the water you are fishing. This is 

 where the man who can tie his own flies scores 

 so heavily. He need never be satisfied with a 

 rendering of a fly which seems to him inadequate, 

 and he can always be trying the effect of some slight 

 change. He probably has his materials with him, 

 and he can do it then and there when an idea comes. 

 The rest of us have to wait patiently while some one 

 else does it for us, and at the quickest the obtaining 

 of a new fly takes several days. 



The longer I fish the more I see the value of skill 

 in fly-tying, and were I to begin over again, I think 



