TROUT-FISHING 

 like porter — it must also be admitted that there are times and condi- 

 tions for both methods. It would be as idle to fish with a dry red quill 

 in the Tay or Blackadder in spate as it would be to exhibit a cast of 

 Heckum-peckum, March Brown and Yellow -and -Teal on a summer 

 day to the nervous inhabitants of Abbot's Worthy or Stockbridge water. 

 But there are times when the dry fly will ensure success even in the larger 

 rivers of the north that might be denied to the most skilful fisher with 

 the wet fly. Let us, as fly-fishers, be catholic in our judgment, if not in 

 our tastes. It is somewhat strange that the ultra-advocates of dry-fly, 

 while extolling the superior delicacy and science required for their 

 craft, have never, so far as I have heard or read, employed the 

 strongest argument of all in its favour, namely, that whereas the 

 wet-fly fisher presents to the fish what he calls " flies," and makes 

 them perform subaqueous leaps and bounds such as no living fly could 

 execute, the dry-fly man has not only to simulate the exact form and, 

 as is generally believed, the colour of the natural insect, but has to let 

 the current give it precisely the same motion as the floating creature 

 would have. 



Let us leave it at this — ^the object and purpose of a fly-fisher being to 

 catch fish, he is the best practical angler who adapts his procedure — 

 wet or dry, sunk or floating — to the conditions of wind, water and weather, 

 and the dry-fly fisher has to overcome greater difficulties in this respect 

 than the wet -fly fisher. 



3. — Lake fishing for trout. The charm of lake -fishing differs from that of 

 stream-fishing in the same degree as lake scenery differs from river 

 scenery. There is less variety in it; indeed the ordinary method of fly- 

 fishing in a loch— casting from a boat allowed to drift slowly — is apt to 

 suffer from monotony. On the other hand, it has attractions which many 

 streams are without. The trout in a Scottish or Irish lake are likely to 

 be of greater size and superior condition compared with those in the 

 neighbouring streams. There is more mystery in a lake than in a river; 

 the angler's imagination is stirred by visions of the monsters that may 

 inhabit its depths. There seems always a chance of getting hold of 

 something beyond ordinary strength and weight, and most men who have 

 done much lake -fishing have had that fancy fulfilled. 



But the outward aspect of a lake is no guide to the number or average 

 size of the trout therein. Where a mountain loch is fed by numbers of hill 

 burns affording unlimited spawning-ground it may contain nothing but 



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