SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS 145 



But we have it here again, not that the wet fly is wicked, 

 but that it does not pay. 



Now, where in the writings of any angling authority do 

 we get it laid down that the wet fly is wicked, and that the 

 high-and-dry school are entitled to look down from a height 

 of ethical superiority upon those who can, and do, alternate 

 wet with dry? I have looked in vain. 



Viscount Grey, at p. 123 of "Fly Fishing," says: 

 w Some dry-fly anglers may have spoken of wet-fly fishing 

 as a ' chuck-and-chance-it ' style, by which small fish are 

 caught easily in coloured water on coarse tackle. Some 

 wet-fly anglers, on the other hand, may have expressed a 

 belief that all the talk about dry flies is superfluous, and 

 that large, well-fed trout, in clear, smooth water, can be 

 caught by the methods skilfully applied which are suc- 

 cessful in North-Country rivers. If there be any angler 

 on either side who still holds such opinions, he can but be 

 advised to put them to the test in practice, and so bring 

 himself to a more just frame of mind." 



Not a word, be it observed, of deprecation of the wet 

 fly because it is wicked, but merely that it does not pay. 

 He goes on: " I have known and tried enough of the wet 

 fly to be sure that the use of it has very narrow limits in a 

 pure chalk stream, well-fished, where the season does not. 

 begin till May." If Viscount Grey does not mean that he has 

 tried it in chalk streams, his evidence does not go very 

 far. If he does mean it, he clearly does not deprecate it 

 on any ground except that it is not effective. 



Mr. H. S. Hall, in the Badminton Library, is silent on the 

 subject, beyond suggesting that there is no hope for the 

 chalk-stream angler in anything but the dry fly. 



Mr. G. A. B. Dewar, again, in the " Book of the Dry Fly," 

 compares the dry fly on streams to which it is peculiar 

 with the wet fly on rough streams, and fails, for some reason 



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