MA Y. 



FISHING WITH THE DRY FLY. 



BY OSWALD CRAWFURD. 



To catch trout with the wet fly in the common way is a beautiful 

 art, but to take them with the Dry Fly is less an art than a 

 science, or rather, it is something of both. The older method 

 has been uncharitably described, by the followers of the new, as 

 the " chuck and chance it" style. The fisherman throws his two, 

 three or four flies in any water likely to hold a trout, and relies on 

 a fish seeing and taking the lure. For aught he knows, there 

 may not be a fish within ten yards of his cast, and he cares little 

 whether his lure sinks below the surface or remains upon it. Not 

 so in Dry Fly fishing. Here the angler must first discover the 

 fish, then send the fly the right fly floating down the water 

 exactly over its head. It takes a better man to do all this than 

 to fish in the older method, a man with keener sight, for he has 

 to guess the presence of a trout on the feed by indications which 

 the ordinary fisherman would only suppose to be the swirls and 

 circlets and ripples of the flowing stream. He must have more 

 skill, too. in casting, for he must hit the water with his fly to an 

 inch-breadth ; he must also be a fair entomologist, for unless he 

 knows most of the insects that people the river bank, and is 



