76 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



of details of each process, which seem to them from habit 

 to be so simple and obvious as not to require explanation, 

 there seem to be none who go to the real root of the matter, 

 and tell the student what he is or should be aiming at 

 when he sets out to dress an artificial fly. In saying this 

 I have not forgotten Cutcliffe and his " Trout Fishing in 

 Rapid Streams." In that work, one of the soundest and 

 cleverest in the whole range of fly-dressing literature, 

 the author does propound, in language which lacks nothing 

 in clearness and sincerity, a system of dressing and fishing 

 the artificial fly as a lure. But that is only one, and far 

 from the most important aspect of fly dressing and fly 

 fishing; and when he deals with fly dressing from the 

 imitative, representative, or suggestive side, he does so 

 in a very perfunctory manner ; for, for the streams of Devon 

 to which his fishing was confined, that was not a side of 

 the subject to which he attached much importance. 



Most, if not all, of the other writers who have dealt with 

 the subject have dealt with it locally and almost entirely 

 as a mechanical art. While saying this (and I hope I am 

 doing no author an injustice) I should like to make it clear 

 that I have never read one of them and attempted the 

 method he describes without learning something from 

 him, and no method portrayed has proved entirely without 

 merit. 



Still, the writer has yet to come who will treat the art of 

 trout-fly dressing as a whole, and will make clear to the 

 learner the aims, objects, and advantages of the varying 

 styles and methods adapted to varying conditions of brook, 

 stream, river, and lake, and the processes by which they 

 can be achieved. 



The first stage must, I suggest, be the adoption of a 

 clear terminology as an aid to clear thinking. For in- 

 stance, most of the writers above referred to tell us that 



