44 



SALMON AND TROUT. 



Another and still simpler attachment for the drop-fly, which 

 in practice I usually adopt as being much the quickest, is, 

 with a double half-hitch (^ of the knot in fig. 2), to knot on 

 the drop-fly — fly uppermost — to the casting line (fig. 5). On 

 this knot being pulled tight, and slipped down as far as the 

 next juncture on the line, it will be found to answer exceed- 

 ingly well, although the point of junction is one which will 

 always have to be carefully looked at from time to time, as the 

 friction of the drop-fly knot is apt to fray away the link to 

 which it is attached. For salmon fishing I never myself use a 

 second fly, unless by any chance the river or lake I am fishing 

 be also tenanted by white trout, and then, of course, the fly is 

 a comparatively small one, for which the last-named attach- 

 ment, fig. 5, will answer every purpose ; or slightly better, 

 perhaps, the fly may be attached above one of the knots with 

 a loop, as shown in fig. 6 \ or, stronger still, as in fig. 7, — an 

 attachment which also gives the maximum stand-out-at-right- 

 angle inclination to the fly, and the principle of which, as applied 

 to casting lines with the ordinary splice, I explained in the 

 Modern Practical Angler,' fig. 8. 



FIG. 6. 



FIG. 8. 



PIG. 7. 



Nothing can well be more clumsy than the knots usually 

 employed in joining the strands of a salmon casting line, and 

 their inefficiency in the matter of strength is on a par with 

 their unsightliness. In the 'Book of the Pike,' 1865, I gave 

 diagrams and explanations of the buffer knot above referred 



