40 SALMON AND TROUT. 



the point of junction is one which will always have to be care- 

 fully looked at from time to time, as the friction of the drop-fly 

 knot is apt to fray away the link to which it is attached. For 

 salmon fishing I never myself use a second fly, unless by any 

 chance the river or lake I am fishing be also tenanted by white 

 trout, and then, of course, the fly is a comparatively small one. 



Nothing can well be more clumsy than the knots usually 

 employed by the tackle-makers in joining the strands of a 

 salmon casting line, and their inefficiency in the matter of 

 strength is on a par with their unsightliness. One could hardly 

 have a better illustration of the extreme slowness of tackle- 

 makers to acquire any knowledge, even when it is thrust under 

 their noses, as it were, than the fact that a knot immeasurably 

 better on the score of strength, far neater in the matter of 

 sightliness, tied with less trouble, and free from any conceivable 

 drawback, should have been published nearly twenty years ago, 

 and that the old-fashioned, comparatively worthless, knot, 

 should still be that which they almost universally adopt ! In 

 the ' Book of the Pike,' 1865, 1 gave diagrams and explanations 

 of the knot referred to, which, though my own invention, I 

 have ventured to characterise in the above eulogistic terms, for 

 the reason that their accuracy or otherwise is capable of being 

 put to a simple and conclusive proof. This knot has been 

 since published in the ' Modern Practical Angler,' which has 

 gone through four or five editions at least, and must, therefore, 

 have passed under the eyes of the tackle-makers, a part of 

 whose business it is to sell fishing books ; and yet, as I say, I 

 cannot point to a single tackle-maker who has had the common 

 sense to adopt my system of knot. 



The principle of the knot is as follows : The gut having 

 been thoroughly soaked beforehand in tepid water which is, 

 of course, a sine qua non in all gut knottings lay the two strand- 

 side by side and proceed exactly in the same manner as that 

 above described for tying the single fisherman's knot, with the 

 exception of the final drawing together of the two separate 

 half-hitches. Instead of drawing these two knots together and 



