INTRODUCTION. 



HE "All-round Angler," after all, may be 

 said to represent the masses of the brother- 

 hood. What there is in the delightful sport 

 of angling that is simple, economical, and 

 universal, is most decidedly his. Old father 

 Izaak was in a pre-eminent degree an all- 

 round angler ; while his friend Cotton was, 

 perhaps, more of a specialist, devoted rather to the crystal 

 streams of the Derbyshire dales, and their trout and grayling, 

 than to the meadows of the Lea, along which the tuneful milk- 

 maid came to tend her kine. In these days of improved railway 

 and steamboat communication, of developed angling literature, 

 and of multiplying angling associations, the specialists increase, 

 no doubt, in a fair ratio ; and it is no uncommon thing to meet 

 with sportsmen who boast that they have never used any but 

 a fly-rod, and have not deemed it worthy of themselves to 

 descend to any fish but the salmonidce, which, by common con- 

 sent (though with somewhat of a stretch of meaning), we, in 

 these days, term the game fishes par excellence. This exclusive - 

 ness is often a matter of early training. 



But, alas! it does not fall to the lot of every man to be born on 

 the banks of a salmon-river or trout- stream, and to be able to 

 learn the rudiments of the art by practising upon the aristocracy 

 of the waters. Had it happened to all of us to kill salmon with 

 a fly before we were out of round jackets, we too might nourish 

 a bias in favour of such lordly species, and resolve that, so 

 far as in us lay, we would not stoop to meaner game. But 



