viii PREFACE TO . 



A modern work on general Angling has long been much 

 needed. We have works upon fly-fishing, and excellent 

 ones too ; we have good works upon spinning and trolling ; 

 we have few modern works upon bottom-fishing at large ; 

 and we have no modern book upon all of these styles com- 

 bined, since the last book of any note of that sort (which 

 is Ephemera's 'Handbook') was published twenty years 

 ago, and Angling has made great strides in the last twenty 

 years. 



One thing the student may rely on, viz. all that is set 

 down here is the result of carefully conned experience, 

 often proved. I have not entered the realms of fancy, 

 and I have not borrowed the experience of others as 

 though it were my own, and of my own origination. I 

 have endeavoured to borrow as little as possible; and 

 where I have been obliged to borrow, I have striven to 

 make the fullest acknowledgment of my indebtedness, and 

 to do that justice to others which I hope to have done to 

 myself. The branch in which I have been the most com- 

 pelled to borrow is in the trout flies. The reason of this 

 is obvious, as the flies on which the trout feed are the 

 same to-day that they were 500 years ago. Perhaps to 

 Mr. Konalds' ' Fly-fisher's Entomology ' I am the largest 

 debtor, and a better authority one could not borrow from, 

 since it is by far the best work that has ever been written 

 on the subject. But it must not be forgotten that even 

 Ronalds borrowed these flies for the most part in his turn. 

 Let the reader turn to one of our earliest books on fly- 

 fishing, and he will there find described by Cotton all the 

 best flies taken by the trout in the present day, and which 

 have been more or less reproduced and described by every 

 subsequent angling writer up to Rpnalds. There we find 



