PREFACE. 



I HAVE been for several years before the public 

 as a periodical writer on piscatorial matters, and 

 during this period have received more commu- 

 nications than I can enumerate, from corre- 

 spondents in various parts of the empire, urging 

 me to write a plain, sensible, practical book on 

 Angling in general. 



They have one and all complained that the 

 tajority of works extant upon Angling treated 

 oily of one brajich of the art ; and even in those 

 orjss which embraced a greater variety of the 

 subjects the treatment was so limited as to 

 be unsatisfactory and incomplete. They have 

 insisted upon the necessity of a book that would 

 teach, as far as possible, practically and fully, 

 fly-fishing, trolling, and bottom-fishing ; and they 

 have also thought so favourably of me as to assert 

 that they had full confidence in my ability to fill 

 up the hiatus they lamented. Thus pressed to 

 render a service to the angling world, I have 

 made the attempt in the following pages. 



Deeming fly-fishing the most important divi- 

 sion of the art, I have written on it with metho- 



