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streams. Its advantages are many and great. 

 It is easily executed, irrefragably strong, ex- 

 tremely small, becoming more so the more it 

 be pulled, and affords by far the easiest and 

 quickest mode of putting on and taking off 

 your flies. By adopting this sort of knot you 

 get rid of the old and clumsy way of looping 

 on your flies. 



If you fish with three flies, and in the streams 

 of the midland counties we advise you never to 

 fish with a greater number at a time, your cast- 

 ing-line must consist of two yards and a half of 

 gut.* Your tail-fly, or stretcher, which ought 

 to be your chief killing-fly, must be tied on a 

 link of the finest gut, finer, if possible, than the 



* Colonel Hawker says, " Use about eight feet of gut, 

 and the addition of that on the tail-fly will bring the whole 

 foot-line to about three yards. Put on your bob (dropper) 

 fly a few inches below the middle ; or, if in a weedy river, 

 within little more than a yard of the other ; lest, while 

 playing a fish with the bob, your tail-fly should get caught 

 in a weed. More gut than is here prescribed will be found 

 an incumbrance when you want to get a fish up tight ; 

 insomuch, that, of the two, I would rather have a little 

 less than more of it." 



Bowlker, an authority of fair reputation, observes, 

 that " An experienced fly-fisher will use three or four flies 

 at the same time : the leading-fly should be fastened to 

 the gut bottom by a water-knot, in preference to a loop ; 

 the first dropper about a yard from the leading-fly ; the 

 second dropper about eighteen inches above the first; and 

 the third, if required, about a foot from the second." We 

 recommend this spacing (to use a printer's word) of flies 

 when four are attached to the casting-line. 



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