Ill 



SOME MORE FLY DRESSING 

 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE 



THEORIES OF WET-FLY DRESSING OF TROUT FLIES. 



The question why winged patterns of trout flies are used, 

 and used successfully under water, is no new one. It 

 must often have been a cause of bewilderment to the 

 thoughtful angler. But in seeking for an explanation the 

 inquirer only hampers himself if he assumes that the trout 

 takes the winged artificial fly merely as an imitation of the 

 natural fly. 



The propensity of a trout to " go for " anything behaving 

 unnaturally is well known. He will lie peacefully among 

 a shoal of minnows, but let one of them be placed on a 

 flight of hooks and spun before him in a series of strange 

 contortions, and he is impelled to attack it. In the same 

 way, let a winged dressing of a fly be dragged across his 

 vision in a way in which no natural fly behaves, and the 

 same impulse is set in motion. This, no doubt, accounts 

 for the taking of the winged fly fished down-stream wet. 

 Somewhat similar considerations apply to the case of the 

 winged fly or team of winged flies dropped under a bank 

 or a bush and tripped across-stream towards the angler. 



But winged flies are often presented to the trout much 

 more naturally than in either of these ways, and then, 

 during the rise, they are often, no doubt, taken for what 

 they purport to represent — namely, the subimago hatching, 



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