;o SALMON AND TROUT. 



fishing with three flies and a double-handed rod, an extra foot 

 — making, say, ten feet in all — is sometimes added, but it may 

 be safely said that fifty 3-yard casting lines are made for one 

 over that length. Where eyed flies are used, which have of 

 course no separate link of gut belonging to them, the casting 

 line becomes practically a link shorter. 



I rarely myself use more than two flies in trout or any other 

 fishing — except occasionally when experimenting on the best 

 flies for a new water — and therefore three yards is an ample 

 allowance. Not that, as ' Box and Cox ' expresses it, I have any 

 ' violent animosity or rooted antipathy ' to three flies, but that 

 for ordinary purposes I find two preferable. Two flies can be 

 cast better than three ; two flies can be ' worked ' better than 

 three ; two flies are not so liable to entanglements as three ; 

 and when they do get ' mixed ' the tangle is less inextricable. 

 By ' working better,' what I mean is that whilst the upper 

 dropper, which, a second or two after the cast, hangs — or should 

 hang — clear of the line, and, barring the fly, nearly clear of the 

 water also, — and whilst the tail fly is of course always swimming 

 clear, the lower or second dropper, by the action of drawing in the 

 flies, gets of necessity more or less muddled up with the casting 

 line (which the nose of a rising fish is very likely to strike), and 

 cannot be worked, like the top dropper, cross-line or 'otter' 

 fashion, dribbling along, that is, amongst the ripples. 



The argument applies also to river fishing, though perhaps 

 in a somewhat less degree inasmuch as the action of a current 

 — often nearly smooth — does not lend itself so readily to the 

 artistic working of the dropper as the streamless and generally 

 wind-wrinkled surface of a lake. 



All this, however, is fairly a question of practice as well as 

 theory, and, as I say, many excellent fly-fishers — perhaps a 

 majority — prefer three flies to two. Their contention is that it 

 gives a greater chance of the flies being seen, and a greater 

 choice to the fish when he does see them. 



Passing from the gut to the reel, or running line, I find so 



