COTTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 67 



volves heavy wading, means covering less water, 

 and most important of all, tends to make you 

 line your fish. Indeed, he says, it must; for 

 either your line falls directly on the fish, or it 

 comes over him before the fly. Venables, 

 summing up the argument, decides in favour 

 of upstream in small brooks, but downstream 

 in big rivers, chiefly owing to the disagreeables 

 of wading, in his time practised without 

 waders. The point to notice however is not 

 his actual decision, but the fact that in the 

 seventeenth century, nearly two centuries 

 before Stewart, upstream fishing is fully 

 established. 



So much for the second landmark, upstream 

 fishing. The third, fishing for individual fish, 

 is implicit in fly fishing from the beginning, 

 and must have been practised, but is first men- 

 tioned in Chetham's Anglers Vade Mecum 

 1681, a good treatise, though largely pirated. 

 He says that when you see a trout rise, you 

 should cast the fly behind him and draw it 

 gently over him, and then if your fly is of the 

 right colour and you scare him not, he's your 

 own. Not very scientific, but still individual 

 fishing. 



In Cotton's day trout were fished for with 

 either a single or doublehanded rod. Both 

 were long, the single rod running up to eigh- 

 teen feet and the double to twenty-one. Rods 

 were spliced, not jointed. Cotton praises 

 specially Yorkshire rods, with butts of fir, 



