CHAPTER V. 



CHARLES COTTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 



To fish fine and far off is the first and principal 

 Rule for Trout Angling. 



The Compleat Angler, 



By Charles Cotton. 1676. 



.ERVASE MARKHAM closes the 

 first epoch in the history of fly 

 fishing. The second opens with 

 Barker in 1651 and ends at or 

 shortly after Cotton's book in 

 1676. In this period, exactly 

 a quarter of a century, five writers wrote : 

 Barker, Walton, Franck, Venables and Cotton. 

 All five resembled each other in being practical 

 fishermen, but otherwise were as different as 

 men could possibly be. They approached their 

 task from different points of view and with 

 widely different temperaments and equipments. 

 Indeed this company of five, who had so deep 

 an influence on the history of fly fishing, are the 

 most diversified crew who ever embarked on the 

 same boat : you could hardly imagine a collec- 

 tion of such opposites; had they all met 



