THE TAG AND TAIL. 465 



Having tied in your loop, leaving a good long end of 

 silk hanging down, proceed to business ; and here, again, 

 I must pause to bid you observe that you do not commence 

 to tie the gut on quite up to the end of the hook, as ob- 

 serve in the cut. If you do, you make an unsafe and 

 clumsy shoulder to the fly. Now put your hook in the 

 vice, if you use one, as most amateurs do. The young 

 tyer particularly will want all his ringers about the fly, and 

 will not find it at all easy to hold the hook and tie too. 

 He may possibly come to it in time, but at first he will 

 find his vice a great convenience ; and if he be a wealthy 

 man, and can afford to buy one of those splendid vices of 

 Holtzappfel's, in Cockspur Street, which cost some 31. or 

 4., and by which the hook can be twisted about in any 

 direction, no doubt he will realise the convenience of the 

 same. 



Having fixed his hook firmly, he must, by the aid of 

 the loose silk hanging from the bend of the hook, tie on 

 the tag, which is usually a bit of tinsel. Let him make 

 a long turn of the silk first over the end of the tinsel, as 

 far down towards the bend of the hook as he wishes to go, 

 then lap round tightly back towards the head of the fly, so 

 as not to have to go over the same ground with the silk 

 twice, and, having fixed the end firmly and taken a half 

 hitch (see Plate XV. fig. 2), twist the tinsel two or three 

 times round the hook, so that each turn shall lie evenly side 

 by side. Tie the remainder of the tinsel off firmly with a 

 couple of turns and a half hitch, and cut off the fragment, 

 but not too closely to the silk, or it may happen to slip 

 out subsequently. It often happens that a turn or two of 

 floss silk will be added to the tag ; when tying off the 

 tinsel the end of a fragment of floss silk must be inserted 

 in under the tie and tied in, the tying silk still being 

 worked back towards the head. The floss is then served 

 in the same fashion as the tinsel, and cut off. 



H H 



