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During the last two seasons, 1885-6, I have caught between 

 six and seven hundred trout, weighing from a few ounces up to 

 nearly 2 Ibs., in both stream and loch, with flies dressed on the 

 Turn down eyed hook, and attached by the jam Knot sometimes 

 on traces fine even to the fineness of " Bullmer's gossamer gut " 

 and I cannot call to mind a single instance in which the Knot has 

 been proved to have failed. Moreover (a hint to the novice) 

 flies thus attached are very difficult to flick off. 



With small flies the simplest way, when the gut becomes 

 frayed at the head by wear and tear, is to cut or break the fly off 

 close, disengage the waste end from the eye of the hook, and 

 re-knot. With larger flies and stout gut the jam can generally be 

 loosened by merely pushing the gut backwards through the eye, 

 but this is a matter of unimportance as in either case the operation 

 is only one of a few seconds. 



The perfecting of the Jam Knot for the Trout-fly was the 

 ingenious discovery of Mr. Alex. J. Campbell, and without it I 

 do not hesitate to say that the general acceptance of the system 

 of the Turn-down eyed hook which I am now sanguine enough to 

 hope for, could never have been anticipated. The inconvenience 

 trifling though it was in comparison with previous methods of 

 attaching eyed hooks of tying the jam Knot in the presence of 

 the fly-wings and hackles, was originally the great obstacle to be 

 overcome. This " Knotting-on difficulty " it is, in fact, which has 

 mainly hitherto operated to prevent eyed hooks becoming 

 universally popular. Even in my own hook the difficulty was 

 only incompletely met at first by an invention called a "Fly 

 protector," to which, as it has now become superfluous, further 

 reference is needless. The present method is simplicity itself 

 " automatic," in fact and so easy of manipulation in practice that 

 the veriest tyro ought to master it in five minutes, and after a few 

 essays to tie it by the river side, as I can myself, in 20 seconds. 



