TACKLE AND FISHING GEAR. 27 



of any kind outside the metal loop. / can readily tie it com- 

 plete in twenty seconds. In order, however, to make the fasten- 

 ing to the best advantage, it is necessary that the loop, or eye, 

 should be set at the correct slope or 'pitch,' which for the 

 hooks now under consideration and the Jam Knot attach- 

 ment is exactly half a right angle, and also that the loop 

 should spring sharp from a perfectly straight shank without any 

 preliminary bending or inclination. 



The loop itself should also be as small as possible, both for 

 the sake of neatness, and to bring the gut in a true line with 

 the hook shank. A large or a thick loop does not seem to 

 hold equally well, or to float equally straight, and for this 

 reason I have had the loops of all the larger sizes of turn-down 

 eyed hooks both patterns made of tafiered steel. These 

 loops are enabled to be thus made exceedingly minute, which 

 is of the greatest importance in every way, because in the 

 'jam knot 'the gut has only to pass once through the loop 

 instead of twice, and therefore the loop eye can be, and should 

 be, made correspondingly more minute. In all sizes for trout 

 flies it ought to be just large enough to admit of a medium-sized 

 strand of undrawn trout gut, or a good piece of horsehair, such 

 as is used for roach fishing, being passed readily through it. 



In experimenting with different systems of bends and eyes 

 and loops, I have been led to notice that in the case of all 

 small trout hooks with eyes turned up there is, after the fly has 

 been soaked some little while, a slight very slight deviation 

 in the set of the fly from the true horizontal, and this whatever 

 be the nature of the attachment employed. The final pressure 

 of the metal loop on the gut, or gut knot, being always down- 

 wards, a certain bias is imparted to the fly in the same direc- 

 tion, greater or less according as the angle of the metal eye is 

 correctly or incorrectly achieved. The result of this bias is 

 that the fly has of necessity a slight tendency to hang head 

 down. This is one trifling ' blemish,' if I may call it so, 

 which I rather think no care or nicety of adjustment in the 

 matter of the angle of the turn-up eye can ever entirely 



