LINES AND KNOTS 107 



well varnished. On this I tie my dropper. It serves two 

 purposes stops the knot and saves chafing, and strengthens 

 the line at the very point where it is weakest when a fish 

 takes the dropper. I then cut the gut of my drop fly to about 

 five inches long, well wet the end, and tie a single knot in the 

 extreme end. I then take a single tie (the gut being still 

 moist), the knot being upwards or away from the knot on the 

 cast line, and draw the two tight over the dressed space above 

 the knot, and it will never slip, at least I have never found it 

 do so. This knot is shown in Plate III, Fig. i, page 66. If 

 you cannot open the knot with a pin point when you wish to 

 take the dropper off, just slip the knot off with a penknife, 

 and a pull will release the fly, while the loss of gut will not be 

 a quarter of an inch. Several knots may thus be tied ; and 

 before you get the gut too short for use, the fly will probably 

 be worn out. If you want to be very secure, hold the knot 

 against the knot in the cast line, the fly pointing upwards 

 and from it, and tie a single tie, and then another, between 

 the tie and the end knot, and it is impossible to have any 

 slip ; but in this instance you will most likely find it necessary 

 to cut the whole of the tie off, and will lose more than half an 

 inch of gut. Where the droppers are not required to be 

 removed, I have seen the flies dressed upon long strands of 

 gut, and the gut tied into the casting line as a part of it some 

 four inches above the fly, but I do not like the plan. Some 

 persons, again, adopt the plan of forming a slip loop in the 

 casting line, by tying each end of a strand round the gut of 

 the other strand, slipping the knotted end of the dropper 

 between, and then drawing the knots home tightly, as shown 

 in Plate III, Fig. 2, page 66 ; but this is troublesome to open, 

 it frays the gut at a critical point, and is not to my mind the 

 most secure way of putting on a dropper. 



The running or reel line should be of hair and silk mixed.* 

 Some anglers prefer plaited dressed silk, but I do not like 

 such lines for single-hand rods ; they want lightness and 

 elasticity. Some, again, say that they should be all hair, 

 but this is as bad as the other, as a hair line is apt to kink 

 and hang in the rings. Some aver that silk and hair do not 

 mix well that one gives while the other does not, and so 

 forth. I have occasionally in plaited lines found, after a heavy 



* It is remarkable that the author, after having experience of a silk line, 

 should have gone back to one of hair and silk, which most, if not all, present- 

 day anglers regard as an abomination. ED. 



