INSTRUCTIONS 97 



anglers, terrified to catch a trout, and therefore 

 they reduce the possibility of such a catastrophe 

 to the vanishing point ; it is only after they have 

 gained the requisite courage that they venture 

 to put the fly on the water. One false cast is all 

 the fly requires, and even that can be dispensed 

 with, if the angler is in a hurry. 



Very soon the beginner will begin to feel that 

 he is picking his flies off the water and laying them 

 on again. He may now vary matters somewhat 

 by casting at various angles to the current, even 

 straight across it. When doing so he may allow 

 the flies to float much farther than before, with- 

 out endangering his person, and he is sure to 

 observe that after going a certain distance they 

 are retarded or accelerated in their progress by the 

 line. He is being introduced to an elementary 

 form of " drag " which is the greatest difficulty 

 the dry-fly angler has to contend with, but the 

 successful circumvention of which gives him one 

 of his greatest pleasures. 



As a matter of fact, every angler, no matter 

 what his special predilection as to lure may be, 

 has many of his efforts rendered failures by this 

 same trouble ; but in their case its existence is 

 seldom suspected, as its effect is not so clearly 

 manifested on other lures as it is on a floating fly. 

 " Drag/' and the methods of overcoming it, will be 

 discussed after the elementary principles of dry- 

 fly fishing have been mastered. 



It will be remarkable if, by the time the feat 

 of laying a fly neatly and delicately on the water 

 has been fairly satisfactorily accomplished, not a 

 single rise has resulted. If, however, that should 



