ON TACKLE MAKING, ETC. 153 



they tie a knot at the eiid of the gut of the dropper, put 

 it between the gut strands Between the ties before they are 

 drawn home together, and then when drawn home the knot 

 in the dropper holds it. I don't approve of the plan. 

 The only other knots or hitches worth notice are the single 

 hitch, by which a running line without a loop can be 

 fastened very quickly and simply to the casting line: 

 when drawn home this is very secure. (See Fig. 4.) A 

 double hitch can be made by returning the knot at the end 

 of the running line again through the eye, so as to leave 

 a bight of the line on one side of it and the knot end on 

 the other. When this is drawn tight, the hitch can be 

 undone instantaneously by a pull at the knot. The double 

 slip, which is given at Fig. 5, is the double slip loop 

 mentioned in fastening on salmon flies, the bight is pushed 

 through the loop of the fly so far that the whole fly can 

 be turned through it, the slip is drawn home and the end 

 cut off. It is usually easy thus to take the fly off and put 

 on another in the same way, though now and then the 

 loop gets so jammed that it is not very easy to do so. 

 These are all the knots that are really required by the 

 angler. 



The next point is how to tie a trout fly. The simplest 

 form of trout fly is not difficult at all to learn. Of course 

 practice is required to be able to do it neatly. The 

 simplest form of fly is that of the plain hackle or palmer 

 fly. It is fitted with more or less body, which has a 

 hackle rolled over it till it resembles a small section of a 

 bottle brush. In the north, where hackle flies are largely 

 and in some instances almost exclusively used, only a few 

 turns of the hackle are made at the head of the fly. In 

 other flies take chub flies for example they are rolled 

 thickly all up the body from tail to head. In most of the 



