FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 should have had the whole mystery of dry -fly fishing explained in a single 

 paragraph. Writing twenty years later in his "Book on Angling," Francis 

 Francis lays down that "the angler should never fish downstream if 

 he can by any possibility fish up." He had studied and profited by 

 Stewart's treatise; but, although Francis's excellent volume contained 

 472 pages, a single one of these sufficed for all he had to say about the 

 dry fly; although in the preceding page he describes taking four brace of 

 large trout from Lord Portsmouth's water on the Test with a wet fly deeply 

 sunk. He refers to the dry fly as being " at times an invaluable method, 

 whereby trout may be killed on fine, bright days when the wet fly would 

 be almost useless." Evidently he was speaking only of the old pattern of 

 trout-fly fished dry, not of the kind specialized for floating with cocked 

 wings. This is not carrying the matter much further than did i^lianus the 

 Honeytongued, who, writing about a hundred years after the birth of 

 Christ, described very graphically the mode of fly-fishing practised in 

 the rivers of Greece, and even gave particulars as to the material used 

 in tying the flies. 



In those streams where the mayfly cometh, it was the practice to fish 

 with the natural insect " blowing " — that is, floating it out on the breeze 

 with a line of floss silk. That, of course, was fishing dry; but it is curious 

 how long it was before fishermen seem to have bethought them of fishing 

 with the artificial mayfiy dry. Thus in the " Chronicle of the Houghton 

 Fishing Club, 1822-1908," which I had the pleasure of editing for the 

 members, the first mention of a trout taken with artificial mayfly occurs 

 on June 6, 1888, on which day, of eight trout weighing 17 lb. 7 oz. killed 

 by Lord Moreton, one is specified as having been so taken, the rest 

 apparently having been caught "blowing." 



The trout streams of the Southern and Midland English counties fall 

 into two classes — those wherein the mayfly abounds, and those where it 

 is not known. It has disappeared from some rivers and parts of rivers 

 which it inhabited in former years. The reason for this is hard to divine, 

 though probably it is the result of excessive weed -cutting and removal 

 of silt from the channels. The mayfly is never seen now in the Itchen 

 above Abbot's Worthy, though it would not be surprising if some day 

 it were to re-appear there in its pristine abundance.* 



*I do not think I have ever seen the true mayfly (^Ephemera daniea) in Scotland, though I have been assured that 

 it exists there, and Richard Franck in his Northern Memoirs (1651) writes of the green and grey drake in that country. 

 When Tweedside fishermen talk of the mayfly, they mean the stonefly (Perla bipuuctata), a totally different insect. 



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