THE DRY FLY. 131 



suited to his theme, for while he never rises to 

 great heights, he commands, in his earlier 

 books, a prose which is apt and direct, and 

 essentially his own. He established the dry fly 

 as we know it. There have not been many 

 changes since he wrote. Tackle has been 

 refined still further, rod, reels and lines are if 

 possible more excellent, flies are more closely 

 copied and in particular the nymph and spent 

 spinner are novelties. But the method of fish- 

 ing is unchanged. You still have to find your 

 trout rising or willing to rise, and to cast 

 accurately and delicately. Halford's directions 

 are as good and as useful as on the day when 

 they were written. 



If he is to be criticised it is because like most 

 reformers he overstated his case. He considered 

 that the dry fly had superseded for all time and 

 in all places all other methods of fly fishing, and 

 that those who thought otherwise were either 

 ignorant or incompetent. He did not realise, 

 and perhaps it is impossible that he should have 

 realised, that the coming of the floating fly did 

 not mean that previous experience and previous 

 knowledge were as worthless as though they had 

 never been; but that it meant that from then 

 onwards fly fishing was divided into two 

 streams. These streams are separate, but they 

 run parallel, and there are many cross channels 

 between them. Looking back more than a 

 generation to Halford's first book, and taking 

 note of what has happened, two tendencies are 



