SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS 139 



result was also the keeping light of the reel line, and thus 

 was produced a combination which, exquisite in its way, 

 was the very worst that could be conceived for dry-fly 

 fishing. Stewart preached the stiff rod and the upstream 

 cast, but his was necessarily a short cast. The things 

 which made the dry fly generally possible were the coming 

 of the heavy American braided oiled silk line and the 

 split-cane rod. I remember buying my first length of 

 oiled silk line in 1877, but I knew so little of its purpose 

 that I used it for sea fishing, and it was, I think, in the 

 eighties that, stimulated by American progress in the 

 building of split-canes, our makers began to build split-canes 

 suitable for carrying these heavy lines. The heavy line 

 was needed to deliver the fly dry and to put it into the 

 wind, the split-cane, or a wood rod on the same lines, was 

 necessary to deliver the heavy line. With the hour came 

 the men, Mr. H. S. Hall, Mr. G. S. Marryat, and Mr. F. M. 

 Halford, who evolved from the poor feeble types of dry 

 fly of the seventies the efficient dry fly of the eighties and 

 the present day. 



THE EXCOMMUNICATION OF THE WET FLY. 



I have been trying for some time past — but hitherto in 

 vain — to discover the precise moment of time when the 

 theory that it was not sportsmanlike, and therefore not 

 permissible, to fish with the wet fly upon chalk streams 

 was given to a reverently awaiting world, and who was the 

 prophet from whose lips the words of wisdom fell. I recall 

 some years ago seeing it propounded in the Press — I 

 believe in the Fishing Gazette — that it was a rule upon 

 chalk streams that the dry fly only must be employed, 

 and I remember being not a little amused, for up to that 

 time, though fishing quite a noted length of a crack chalk 

 stream, and meeting upon it many excellent fishers with 



