4 SALMON AND TROUT. 



hook and end with the rod, as the hook is relatively more 

 important in the case of the fly-fisher than of the float-fisher, 

 and greater strides and innovations have been made in it of 

 late than in any other branch of fishing tackle. There have, 

 of course, been also the usual controversies of the rival in- 

 ventors, or claimants to be such, into the merits of which I do 

 not propose to enter in these pages, but rather simply to notice 

 the inventions themselves where they appear to be of value. 



To take salmon hooks first. 



Two great and comparatively recent l improvements stand 

 out boldly from amongst all minor matters connected with the 

 subject of salmon hooks and their manufacture. The first is the 

 substitution of eyes or loops of metal for the old-fashioned gut 

 loops, and the second the employment of double hooks brazed 

 together, which will, in many cases, especially for the smaller 

 sizes of salmon fly, be found a great improvement, at any rate 

 in regard to the holding of fish when once hooked. The metal 

 loop, however, is by far the more important of the two inven- 

 tions as it is of universal applicability. 



This loop may be either turned up, or turned down, or 

 'needle-eyed' that is, drilled perpendicularly through the 

 end of the hook shank like the eye of a needle. 



Whatever disadvantages might be imagined to attach to the 

 turned eye in fine trout hooks, they certainly disappear in the 

 case of the large-sized hooks ordinarily employed in salmon 

 and grilse fishing. The undoubted advantages of the system 

 of metal eyes or loops are, on the contrary, brought out in 



1 The general idea of these improvements is not new, but old. Eyed hooks 

 for trout, if not for salmon also, were known more than a century ago. Such 

 a hook, with a fly dressed on it, is engraved in Hawker's edition of Walton's 

 Angler, temp. 1760, and the double salmon hook was described nearly a hun- 

 dred years earlier still, in the Angler s Vade Alecum, published by James Chet- 

 ham in 1689. In using the expression ' recent improvements,' I mean that it is 

 only recently these ideas have been so far elaborated and worked out as to 

 become practically available for general use in fly-fishing. Indeed, it was only 

 a few months ago that a writer on the subject asserted ' The eyed trout hook 

 and its gut attachment may be said to be perfected in the Fishing Gase/te of 

 April 4, 1885, by Mr. Cholmondeley-Pennell's article. But see how many 

 years it has taken to do this I ' 



