THE FLY QUESTION 109 



wager on his doing just as well with the new equip- 

 ment as with the old. This, of course, applies to 

 districts in which conditions of water, etc., are more 

 or less similar. But I am also convinced that if you 

 took a really skilful wet-fly man, told him the rudi- 

 ments of dry-fly practice, gave him a tin of grease 

 for his line, and set him loose on a chalk stream with 

 his own patterns, he would quickly find himself on 

 excellent terms with the trout. In fact, I have 

 seen that occur more than once. 



I have dwelt on the difficulty of systematising one's 

 selection of a stock of flies ow r ing to the way in which 

 some pattern heretofore little esteemed may sud- 

 denly justify itself by a marked success. For all 

 that, however, I suppose every angler has his 

 favourites, and I certainly have mine, the result 

 of gradually accumulated experience. On the whole, 

 I think, my tendency is to reduce rather than increase 

 their number ; though now and then some new one 

 may be added, it probably replaces an old one or 

 at any rate detracts from its importance by doing 

 part of its work. Of course it would not be easy to 

 set down a dozen patterns either for dry-fly fishing 

 or for mountain streams and say that these met 

 every possible need. They would not, and the 

 heterogeneous array in box or book proves that they 

 would not. One carries a great many patterns 

 which one seldom uses and in which one has no great 



