The Fishing of Rivers with the Wet Fly 83 



his great-grandfather when he fished with a 

 casting line of several links of hand-twisted 

 horsehair, with large, roughly-dressed flies 

 attached to the same substantial and 

 clumsy substitute for gut three, four, or 

 even five horsehairs, twisted together, to 

 each fly. 



A step at each cast; pool and stream 

 fished as nearly alike as may be ; and, above 

 all things ridiculous and unthinking, the 

 same methodical casting and swirling round 

 of the line, in a semi-circle, when the trout 

 are rising freely at the natural fly; as he 

 had adopted when there was no sign of 

 " a rise," say, half an hour before. 



This is the " how-not-to-do-it " system 

 of wet-fly fishing, and there is not one ounce 

 of brains to a ton of practice, in the whole 

 wretched, uninteresting, unsportsmanlike 

 business. 



I trust I shall be able to show, ere I 

 have finished, that we who are rather more 

 advanced in our methods, and are ardent 

 wet-fly enthusiasts, have " a method in our 

 madness/' seldom revealed, save to the 

 man who works out his own problems, with 

 patience and untiring energy : and who is 

 never dismayed by non-success, nor unduly 

 elated, when it is his turn to be lucky. 



