4 THE DRY FLY AND FAST WATER 



my flies wet or sunk. Such was the manner 

 universally prevailing upon our streams and 

 the manner of my teaching. I had read about 

 the dry fly and knew that its use was general 

 in England, which country may justly be said 

 to be its place of origin. That this is true may 

 not be gainsaid, yet it seems to me remarkable 

 that with all the reputed ingenuity of Americans 

 the present development of dry fly fishing for 

 trout should be almost entirely the work of 

 British sportsmen. That the use of the dry fly 

 on streams in this country has not been more 

 common may be due to a pardonable disin- 

 clination upon the part of expert wet fly anglers 

 to admit the weakness of their method under 

 conditions as they now exist. Their method 

 has served them well, as it did their fathers 

 before them, and perhaps they are loath to sur- 

 render it for something new. In the earlier 

 days trout were much more abundant in our 

 streams, and the men who fished the streams 

 and wrote upon the subject of fly fishing in 

 this country may have felt that a knowledge of 

 the habits and haunts of the fish was more es- 

 sential to success in taking them than the em- 

 ployment of any particular method. The merits 

 of up-stream over down-stream fishing caused 



