SOME MORE FLY DRESSING 131 



best be dressed without a hackle. A hen's hackle, or a small 

 bird's hackle, would respond to every moment of the current, 

 and would thus suggest an appearance of life in action, which 

 is very fascinating. The Yorkshire hackles and Stewart's 

 famous trio of " spiders," so called, are based on this theory. 

 What these flies really represent cannot always be certainly 

 predicated. Doubtless the hackles in some cases suggest 

 the wings and legs of hatched-out insects, drowning or 

 drowned and tumbled by the current, and in others they 

 suggest some nondescript, struggling subaqueous creature. 

 In either case the mobility suggests life. 



Nevertheless, an upstream wet-fly man, however keen on 

 that method, does not always cast directly upstream, but 

 more often up and across, and occasionally across. When 

 he casts across or up and across, and holds his rod-top so as 

 to bring his team of flies as nearly as possible perpendicu- 

 larly across the current, a new set of considerations arises. 

 The droppers, catching the stream more than does the gut 

 cast, are drawn down with head upstream and tail down- 

 stream in advance of the gut cast. Here soft hackles are apt 

 to be drawn back so as completely to enfold the body of the 

 fly, with the points of the fibres flickering softly beyond the 

 bend of the hook, thus suggesting a nymph vainly attempt- 

 ing to swim against the current. The top dropper may 

 be dibbing on the surface, thus suggesting an ovipositing 

 fly. Here the hackle represents the wings of the natural 

 fly in active motion. In these conditions cock's hackles, 

 whether dressed at shoulder only or palmerwise, are apt 

 to impart motion to the wings and body, and to suggest 

 life in this way rather than by their own motion, as do 

 soft hackles. The resilience of a first-rate cock's hackle 

 is great, and every exertion of it must react upon the fly's 

 body, which it surrounds, and impart a motion which, 

 whether lifelike in the sense of resembling the motions of 



