A Dry -Fly Purist's Advice to a Beginner. 71 



Favourable winds. There are some fallacies 

 about the wind. The old couplet that " when the 

 wind is in the south it blows the bait in the fishes' 

 mouth " is right so far that the south wind is 

 nearly always gentle and in the angler's favour, but 

 a south-east or south-west wind is often stormy 

 enough to roughen a river into wavelets or even 

 white-tipped waves. I have had fairly good sport 

 in north-east, seldom in north, winds. A down- 

 stream wind is one to avoid. But if one cannot 

 avoid it the best may be made of it by patience and 

 perseverance, and there are occasions when good 

 results have followed. (See below my short article 

 from the Field, " A Down-Stream Wind.") But too 

 much from any quarter is bad for dry-flyfishing : 



A DOWN-STREAM WIND. 



There is no reason to suppose that larvae in their 

 nymphal transitional state must, by force of a 

 natural law, rise to the surface of a river at a par- 

 ticular and fixed moment of their existence to change 

 into duns ; but rather, on the contrary, it may be 

 inferred that they are endowed with discriminating 

 instinct to defer that metamorphosis for a time until 

 favourable conditions of weather prevail, likely to 

 assist the operation, for otherwise they would be 

 rising at all times. This every dry-fly angler knows 

 is not the case he has too often to wait during 



