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EYED-HOOKS. 



SIR, With regard to this question, there is one thing which I think every 

 fly-fisher will acknowledge viz., that we all have noticed that a run of luck or 

 the reverse continually happens in hooking or losing fish. I have lost fish after 

 fish on some days with the old-fashioned hook on gut, and have fished week 

 after week with hardly a loss. 



This year on the Anton (where, by-the-bye, we have had a wretched 

 season from the scarcity of fly), I have, using always the eyed-hook, hardly lost 

 a fish that I have once hooked, till about a week since, when, with a large 

 evening Sedge Fly, in a mill pool, I hooked five fish in about a quarter of an 

 hour, and lost four of them. This, however, I entirely attributed to this cause 

 that I always endeavour now to avoid striking at a rise, feeling convinced 

 that with a small hook more fish are lost than caught by the act of striking. 

 On this occasion I was, as I have said, using a large hook, which I had not 

 done for a long time, and I have no doubt that something in the shape of a 

 strike was required to make the comparatively coarse point take a proper hold. 

 By striking, I mean the violent action implied in the word, not the necessary 

 raising of the point of the rod when the fish is supposed to have taken a fly. 

 I must say that I am inclined to think that the direction of pull in the turned- 

 down eyed-hooks gives them an advantage over those with the eye turned up; 

 but I have not practically proved this. In fact, as I have said above, it is a 

 very difficult matter to prove these things, as it is, undoubtedly, often a ques- 

 tion merely of a run of luck. 



Your correspondent, " H.H.," seems to forget the numerous advantages 

 of the eyed-hook. They are these: 



1st. You may change your fly certainly four times with the eyed-hook to 

 once of the hook on gut, as the latter must always have at least three or four 

 minutes' soaking in the mouth before tying on, while the last link of your foot- 

 line that you are fishing with is always soft. 



2nd. The gut of a fly that has been some time coiled up in a book will 

 not come straight without long soaking or much trouble with indiarubber or 

 some such means, A curly length of gut at the end of your cast is fatal to fine 

 fishing. 



3rd. On picking out a fly from your book, you continually find that the 

 gut on it is much too coarse for use at the time. This can never happen with 

 the eyed-hook. 



4th. When your gut foot-line is properly tapered you can always fish fine 

 or coarse at a minute's notice; for instance, when you have been using a small 

 fly in the evening, and you suddenly see the fish taking a large Sedge, you can 

 break off one or more of the finer links of your tapered collar, and put the 

 heavy fly on whatever thickness of gut you fancy. 



5th. You never lose a fish from the gut on your fly being old, or rotten, 

 or worn at the head a very common occurrence where a gut hook has been for 

 some time in your fly-book. 



