SUNDRY OBSERVATIONS 147 



to line them and scare them. (I believe this is quite incorrect, 

 for the trout must constantly be having weeds and other 

 matter brought down-stream quite as likely to touch and 

 scare it as the line, and would think nothing of a touch from 

 a line merely carried by the current.) So the wet fly 

 became anathema with some folk. In brief, it did not pay, 

 and it did harm. 



But when it has come to be shown that, rightly fished 

 in the right conditions, it does pay, and does no harm, 

 unless adding to the angler's sport and the weight of his 

 basket be harm, the ground of objection is changed. It 

 is too deadly. It is as bad as worm-fishing or the use 

 of an Alexandra. It is not fly-fishing at all. 



These violences defeat themselves. I am quite willing 

 to admit that whatever is unfair to the brother angler or 

 damaging to the water is rightly to be barred, but to say 

 that it is fair to cast a dry fly persistently over a bulging 

 trout with no genuine hope of getting him, and is unfair 

 to cast a sunk fly to him with a good chance of getting him, 

 seems to me absurd. The water is far more hammered 

 in the former case, and the education of the fish far more 

 likely to be advanced. Everyone who has fished hard- 

 fished waters knows how hardened trout become to being 

 cast to, how they will go on feeding gaily and never making 

 a mistake however often the dry fly is put over them. 

 Viscount Grey gives an excellent description of these 

 conditions in writing of his Winchester days. Yet such 

 fish will often succumb readily to a judicious wet fly, and 

 it is my contention that such fish are better out of the 

 water, to make room for others less over-educated. The 

 Germans know a great deal more about trout management 

 than we do, and their system is to keep the stock moving, 

 and to kill off the older stock quickly, to allow room for 

 growth of the younger fish. A fishery is like partridge or 



