ON RIVERS 79 



is in some measure an exception to a rule that may 

 yet be acknowledged if we discover or invent a cord 

 thinner than salmon gut and not less strong ? 



It is not in my own mind alone that the specu- 

 lation has arisen. Mr. Andrew Lang, who as an 

 angler is much less casual than readers of his buoyant 

 writings would suppose, has said : " I once fished a 

 Highland loch, using the same flies as a friend (the 

 Wasp was the favourite), but employing the finest 

 gut of the chalk stream. My friend, who used the 

 ordinary thick gut of Highland lochs, had scarcely 

 a rise, while for once I was lucky, and got a number 

 of sea-trout and a salmon. The water was brown, 

 and there was plenty of breeze ; yet the fish preferred 

 the flies on fine gut." 



The moral of that statement finds support in an 

 inference from the fact that double hooks, which 

 give in anticipation a pleasant sense of secure hold, 

 are generally discarded except in the case of 

 the smallest flies. Double-hook large flies almost 

 invariably fail. Why? Some authorities say that 

 they fail because they are clumsy ; some that they 

 fail because the distribution of weight upsets the 

 proper attitude of the fly in the water; there are 

 other conjectural explanations. All theories save 

 the correct one have been advanced. Look at a 

 double-hook large fly head-against-the-stream, and 

 the correct theory will make itself evident. The 

 two hooks split the stream ; they mark the water ; 

 the quivering streaks look like limbs of a weird 

 creature with a long and tumultuous tail. If the 



