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A very able, interesting, and suggestive writer on 

 sporting topics, Mr. Earl Hodgson now, alas ! no more 

 devoted the greater part of a chapter of his book on 

 trout-fishing to proving that even in chalk-streams 

 floating flies were occasionally a mistake, and that bags 

 as good or better could sometimes be secured with the 

 wet fly even on such streams as the Test or Itchen. 

 Really he was forcing an open door. Confining my 

 statement for the moment to this river, the little 

 Lambourne, by which I have taken up my abode, there 

 are many days, when the wind is blowing strongly 

 down stream and the sky overcast, when I could 

 easily fill a basket by resorting to what is technically 

 known as combing the water i.e. by putting on 

 two flies, say a large alder as tail fly and a red 

 spinner for dropper, and casting a long line to the 

 opposite bank and letting the flies sweep round until 

 my rod was pointing down-stream nearly parallel 

 with the near bank. But it is not done, because 

 the trout is too valuable a sporting commodity to 

 be massacred in so simple and uninteresting a way. 



Let me distinguish, before appearing to con- 

 demn all wet-fly fishing on southern streams. I 

 am no dry-fly purist, and what I advocate is fishing 

 for the fish you see, either rising or in position, in 

 the manner you think most likely to deceive and 

 attract them. There are times when fish are not 

 feeding at the surface, but bulging or taking the sub- 

 merged nymph, when a wet fly properly floated down 

 is the most skilful, as well as the most expedient, 

 method to adopt. I suppose there is no so-called dry- 

 fly purist so orthodox or I would rather say so 

 obstinate as to deny this, and it has been recently 



