24 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



to one taken by a line of three hairs twisted. 

 Cotton used double hair, except for a very small 

 fly, when he used it single, and for the mayfly, 

 when he used it treble. With double hair a 

 man who could not kill a trout twenty inches 

 long deserved not the name of angler. Finally, 

 Franck, a contemporary of Barker and Cotton, 

 speaks with wonder and awe of a certain Isaac 

 Owldham, who used to fish salmon with a line 

 of three hairs only next the hook. All these 

 authors, be it remembered, are speaking of 

 fishing with no reel, and to kill a four pound 

 trout on a single hair without a reel, or a 

 twenty pound salmon on three hairs,* is a feat 

 few modern anglers would care to attempt. So 

 we must remember the disadvantages under 

 which early fly fishers suffered when we criticise 

 their clumsy lines. Still, when all allowances 

 are made, it must be admitted that the lines in 

 the Treatise are unnecessarily heavy. 



But there is another point we must 

 remember, too, and that is the method of fly 

 fishing which prevailed then and long after. 

 Casting downstream with the wind behind you 

 and using a hair line which though thick was 

 light, it was possible to keep nearly all the line 

 off the water. Early writers insist on this, 

 that your fly must alight before your line, and 



*When Duncan Grant killed his big fish in the Aberlour 

 water of the Spey, after playing it all night, he had thirty 

 plies of hair next the fly ! And this was at the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century ! 



Scrope. Days and Nights of Salmon-Fishing. 1843. 



