viii FOREWORD 



on the wet fly on other waters, and have httle ex- 

 perience of chalk streams, one would find few with 

 any notion that anything but the dry fly could be 

 effectively used upon Hampshire rivers, or that 

 the wet fly was ever used there. I was for years 

 myself under the spell, and it is the purpose of the 

 ensuing pages to tell, for the benefit of the angling 

 community, by what processes, by what stages, I 

 have been led into a sustained effort to recover for 

 this generation, and to transmute into forms suited 

 to the modern conditions of sport on the chalk 

 stream, the old wet-fly art, to be used as a supple- 

 ment to, and in no sense to supplant or rival, the 

 beautiful art of which Mr. F. M. Halford is the 

 prophet. How far my effort has been successful 

 I must leave my readers to judge. I myself feel 

 that in making it I have widened my angling 

 horizon, and that I have added enormously to the 

 interest and charm of my angling days as well as 

 to my chances of success, and that, too, by the 

 use of no methods which the most rigid purist 

 could rightly condemn, but by a diflicult, deli- 

 cate, fascinating, and entirely legitimate form of 

 the art, well worthy of the naturahst sports- 

 man. 



In the course of my too rare excursions to 

 the river-side, I have elaborated some devices, 

 methods of attack and handling, which I have 

 found of service, some applicable to wet-fly, some 

 to dry-fly fishing, or to both. In the hope that 



