90 SALMON FISHING 



and reasonably used. The tinsel will get cut, 

 and come undone, so will the hackles and wing 

 feathers by contact with the sharp teeth of a 

 fish, but this would happen equally, with either 

 a steel eye or a gut loop. What, then, is the 

 advantage of the metal eye over the gut ? It 

 wears longer (that is, the eye not the fly). 

 Therein is the sole claim to any advantage. On 

 the other hand, the fly is not so neat at the 

 head, and in the case of a turn-down eye par- 

 ticularly in large flies, the effect is not pleasing. 

 To salmon fishers, who have given close thought 

 and attention to the art of building up a fly, 

 and who believe in the head being as small and 

 fine as possible, this square turned-down metal 

 eye is most objectionable, as without doubt it 

 causes the fly to skirt and wobble. It is true 

 that many men kill fish with them, but this does 

 not prove that with better-arranged flies they 

 would not have killed more. It would seem quite 

 probable that they would. If a salmon fly is to 

 have a metal eye, why in the name of common 

 sense that eye should not, in form, approach as 

 nearly as possible the usual gut eye, is a mystery. 



Salmon flies can, however, be obtained dressed 

 on oval wire hooks, as shown at Fig. 4, p. 88, 

 both single and double, at the same price as if 

 dressed on ordinary Limerick hooks. The slight 

 turn up of the eye, which is made only suffi- 



