42 BROOK AND RIVER TROUTING 



Upstream fishing is far more difficult than down- 

 stream fishing, and the initial efforts will prove 

 disheartening. Rise after rise will be missed, and the 

 flies will be swept to the feet of the angler almost 

 before he has seen where they lit. It is nevertheless 

 aU important that the novice should school himself in 

 this branch of fly fishing beyond any other, as upon it 

 will depend his future success. 



The education of the angler who has only mastered 

 downstream fishing, or even dry-fly fishing, is 

 incomplete ; and, though the dry-fly purist may 

 shrug his shoulders at the remark, it is not too much 

 to say that, if he were transferred from the pellucid 

 waters of the Chalk stream to some rapid broken river 

 of the North, and were to endeavour to fish the wet 

 fly, it would be some considerable time before he 

 achieved any great success. Whereas the man who 

 has once thoroughly mastered the art of fishing the 

 wet fly upstream would be able quickly to adapt him- 

 self to the conditions and surroundings of the home 

 of the dry fly. 



Scoffers have often termed wet-fly fishing in general 

 the "chuck and chance it" method, but those 

 who thus described it can never have seen an expert 

 at work fishing upstream. There is no such thing as 

 " chuck and chance it " in the way he throws his 

 flies. Every cast is made to a definite point, not 

 necessarily to a rising fish, as in dry-fly fishing, but 



