CHAPTER VIII. 

 DRY-FLY PRELIMINARIES. 



Merits of dry-fly fishing Dry-fly streams The "purist" 

 The rod A new line and reel To make the line float 

 Oil-bottle, cast-case and fly-box Tweezers Flies A 

 list of thirteen The Wickham Knot for tying on a dry 

 fly Drawn gut India-rubber boots. 



THE young angler has now arrived, by stages, at 

 what many fishermen consider the highest branch 

 of the sport, the art of deluding fish with the " dry 

 fly." In a pastime whose every side is fascinating 

 I do not feel constrained to praise any one at the 

 expense of the others, but there is certainly one 

 feature in which dry-fly fishing seems to me to have 

 a decided advantage over most other methods, its 

 fundamental principle of individualisation. In 

 nearly every other kind of fishing one is trying to 

 catch fish of unknown size and quantity, often of 

 merely supposed existence, by methods of whose 

 operation one can see little or nothing. One would 

 need to have arts of wizardry quite unconnected 

 with skill in angling to know what was going on in 



