MAY-FLY FISHING. 377 



Wings: Woodcock. 



Body : Pale condor, nearly but not quite white. 



Hackle: Pale ginger cock, carried down the body from 

 shoulder to tail. It should be fully hackled, and if one hackle 

 is insufficient, two should be used. 



If, after all, you cannot rise the fish ; if all changes of fly are 

 useless ; if you cannot throw accurately against the wind ; if 

 the trout keep coming short, and you either do not touch them 

 or at best only hook them lightly and they get away ; if the 

 hooked fish weed you and break ; if hook after hook snaps off 

 at the barb; if you get cast after cast broken, or perhaps finish 

 up by smashing your favourite rod short off at the butt ferrule, 

 one parting word of advice. Do not swear at the river or the 

 fish in it; do not abuse the hook-maker or fly-dresser; do not 

 rave at the rotten gut, or heap blasphemy on the head of the 

 unfortunate man who made your rod. All this is childish, use- 

 less, and unsportsmanlike. Probably your non-success is due 

 in most respects to your own shortcomings. You cannot rise 

 your fish with any pattern ot fly in your book, because, in all 

 probability, he has seen you or your rod waving over the water^ 

 and is fully alive to the fact that he is being fished for. You 

 cannot get your fly out against the wind, because you hurry 

 your rod and use undue force, or because you will not finish 

 the cast with rod-point close down to the water. You fail to 

 hook your fish, because you strike too soon or too late. The 

 fish weed you, because you lose your presence of mind when 

 they are first hooked, instead of resolutely dragging them at 

 once down stream over the top of the weeds, or giving them 

 plenty of slack line, according to circumstances. Your casts 

 and hooks are broken, because either you do not test them, or 

 else you put undue strain on them. 



As to the fracture of that pet rod, it may be due to a thou- 

 sand-and-one causes besides the roguery of the rod-maker. 

 Perhaps you hurry it too much. Perhaps every time you get 

 a small piece of grass or weed on your hook you lash a long 

 line backwards and forwards, with great violence to try and 



