2 MINOR TACTICS OF THE CHALK STREAM 



day. The difficulty is to dissociate the dead 

 knowledge, which is reading or imitation, from 

 the live knowledge, which is experience. And 

 if these pages have any purpose more than 

 another, it is not to lay down the law or to dogma- 

 tize, but to urge brother anglers to keep an open 

 and observant mind, to experiment, and to bring 

 to their angling, not book knowledge, but the 

 result of their own observation, trials, and experi- 

 ments — failures as well as successes. 



In all humility is this written, for I look back 

 upon many years when it was my sole ambition to 

 follow in the steps of the masters of chalk-stream 

 angling, and to do what was laid down for me — 

 that, and no other ; and I look back with some 

 shame at the slowness to take a hint from ex- 

 perience which has marked my angling career. It 

 was in the year 1892, after some patient years of 

 dry-fly practice, that I had my first experience of 

 the efhcacy of the wet fly on the Itchen. It was a 

 September day, at once blazing and muggy. Black 

 gnats were thick upon the water, and from 

 9.30 a.m. or so the trout were smutting freely. 



In those days, with " Dry -Fly Fishing in Theory 

 and Practice " at my fingers' ends, I began with 

 the prescription, " Pink Wickham on 00 hook," 

 followed it with ''Silver Sedge on 00 hook. Red 

 Quill on 00 hook, orange bumble, and furnace." I 

 also tried two or three varieties of smut, and I rang 

 the changes more than once. My gut was^gossa- 



