6 MINOR TACTICS OF THE CHALK STREAM 



Indeed, it was several years later that, after 

 fluking upon a successful experience of the wet fly 

 on a German river which in general was a dis- 

 tinctively dry-fly stream, I began to speculate 

 seriously upon the possibility of a systematic use 

 of the wet fly in aid of the dry fly upon chalk 

 streams. In conversation with the late Mr. 

 Godwin (held in affectionate remembrance by 

 many members of the Fly-fishers' Club, and, 

 indeed, by all who knew him) , who had seen the 

 very beginnings of the dry fly on the Itchen, and 

 remembered well and had practised the methods 

 which preceded it, I learned how, fishing down- 

 stream with long and flexible rods (thirteen or 

 fourteen feet long), and keeping the light hair reel- 

 line off the water as much as possible, these early 

 fathers of the craft had drifted their wet flies over 

 the tails of weeds, where the trout lay in open 

 gravel patches, and caught baskets of which the 

 modern dry-fly man might well be proud. 



I gathered, however, that a downstream ruffle 

 of wind was a practical necessity ; and as I could 

 not pick my days, and such as I could take were 

 few and far between, I realized that, even if they 

 appealed to me — which they did not — these 

 methods would not do for me, as I might, and often 

 did, find the river glassy smooth, but that, if I were 

 to succeed, it must be by a wet-fly modification of 

 the dry-fly method of upstream casting to indi- 

 vidual fish. 



