TROUT-FISHING 

 thought of fishing for trout in small streams except when these were 

 swollen with rain. Stewart was the first to demonstrate the more difficult, 

 but also more fascinating, craft of taking trout with the fly in low, 

 clear water. His principles were few and simple, consisting of the use of 

 very fine tackle and small flies (chiefly dressed as spiders, that is, with 

 feathers wound as hackles, and without wings), of casting the line up- 

 stream and allowing the flies to float down. He maintained, and his doc- 

 trine was soon confirmied in the experience of his disciples, that whereas 

 one may get much nearer to a trout from behind than he can from in front, 

 without alarming it, a light rod and short line enabled the angler flshing 

 upstream to catch trout under conditions of water and weather which 

 would prove prohibitive to one fishing downstream with a double-handed 

 rod and a long line. 



Stewart applied to bait-fishing the same principle of working upstream, 

 and devised the worm tackle which still bears his name, substituting 

 three or four small hooks tied lengthwise on the gut to a single large hook 

 formerly in use. Thereby he proved that trout could be taken with the 

 worm in low, clear water, which had previously been deemed imprac- 

 ticable. Adepts affirm, and I shall be among the last to doubt it, that 

 low -water worm-fishing for trout is one of the most delicate and difficult 

 branches of angling; but whereas the only precepts enunciated in these 

 pages are founded upon personal practice, I must plead incompetence 

 as an excuse for not describing it more in detail. Whether for salmon or 

 trout — ^for good or for ill — I am a fly -fisher pure and simple, wherefore 

 non ragionam di lor, mat guarda e passa. 



Stewart lived to see his innovations upon the ancient craft universally 

 accepted in Scotland and northern England. Trout angling remains 

 in that region very much as he left it at fifty years ago, albeit the reform 

 which was about to affect the practice on south-country streams is now 

 not without occasional exponents benorth the Tweed. That reform con- 

 sists in casting a floating fly in a dry state upstream, over a trout whereof 

 the exact position has been previously ascertained, instead of the old 

 manner of "chuck-and-chance-it," i.e., fishing the whole stream on the 

 chance of attracting what fish may be in it. 



Before discussing these different systems of fly-fishing for trout, the 

 fish itself deserves a little attention in order to divest it of some of the 

 confusion which has prevailed as to its true nature. 



The British freshwater trout is classified as Salmo fario; but, relying 



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