126 ROD AND RIVER 



advice to the reader is to try the Wickham, 

 and he may rest assured that if it also fails 

 he will have to be content with but a poor day's 

 sport. 



There are all sorts and descriptions of artificial 

 mayflies. A pattern which will do well on one 

 river may be found to fail elsewhere. It is 

 difficult to account for this being so ; still more 

 strange is it that it at times happens that on 

 different portions of the same river it is neces- 

 sary to use a different pattern. On a river, one 

 of the best of our English trout streams, 

 with which I am very well acquainted, formerly 

 renting a small fishing on it, either of two or 

 three different patterns will kill equally well, 

 except in a portion, some two miles above my 

 own fishing, and for a distance of perhaps another 

 two miles, where these patterns were utterly use- 

 less, and another, totally unlike them, was the one, 

 and only one, to be relied on. 



For general use there is, perhaps, no better 

 pattern of mayfly than ' Hammond's champion/ 

 so called after its inventor, the well-known gun 

 and fishing-tackle maker in Winchester. 



For my own use I prefer one which I procured 

 from Mrs. Brocus, Rochester Row, Victoria Street. 

 When ordering it from her, I always describe 

 it as ' Mr. Green's pattern/ because it was given 

 to me by a friend of that name, a well-known 



