SALMON AND TROUT. 



HOOKS. 



Fish-hooks, as they have come down to us from antiquity, 

 and are represented in bone or bronze in our museums and 

 collections, appear to have been steadily improving from 

 century to century, until in our own day the art of hook- 

 manufacture, per se, may be considered to have reached its 

 ultimate ' possibilities.' 



Apart, however, from mere excellence of material and 

 workmanship, the time is now apparently ripe for a sweeping 

 change — so far, at least, as regards hooks used in fresh-water 

 fishing — a change not of detail but of principle : the principle 

 that is, of constructing the hook with a metal eye or loop, at the 

 end of the shank by which the line is attached {knotted ofi) direct 

 to the hook itself, instead of by the old-fashioned process of gut 

 lappings or gut loops. Consequently hook-making may be re- 

 garded to this extent as at present in a transition state ; and 

 the angling world — the trout angler especially — is equally 

 passing through a sort of interregnum between the old system 

 and the new. 



The realisation and completion of the eyed-hook i^rinciple 

 was sure to come sooner or later, for an age which is ' nothing 

 if not mechanical ' could not but in the end rebel against the 

 crude and unscientific method of procedure bequeathed to 

 us by our ancestors, and adopted with scarcely a protest by 

 generation after generation of succeeding anglers. The eyed- 

 hook system was, in fact, the one great perfectionment in fly- 

 fishing that yet remained — in spite of previous incomplete or 

 partially successful attempts — practically unaccomplished ; 

 and recognising the magnitude of the task, as well as the im- 

 portance of its achievement, if achieved, I have for some years 

 past thrown all my energies into the attempt, with results so far 

 eminently encouraging. 



The idea itself, of some sort of plan of attachment direct to 

 the line by means of metal eyes or loops forming part of the 



