MAINLY TACTICAL ^7 



This was one of those rare days when the dry fly 

 can be fished into the bays under the opposite 

 bank. 



OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY CAST. 



If questioned on their favourite mode of ap- 

 proaching a trout, it is probable that nineteen out 

 of every twenty chalk - stream anglers, if not a 

 larger proportion, would plump for the right bank 

 with the rod held over the water. It is doubtless 

 the easiest method. It has various advantages 

 not difficult to enumerate, but it may be gravely 

 doubted whether it is the most effective from the 

 point of view of catching trout. Later under the 

 caption (" The Bank of Vantage ") it is shown 

 — with what success the reader must judge — -that 

 in most states of the wind the left bank has, con- 

 trary to general opinion (other things, of course, 

 being equal), decided advantages over the right. 



Apart from states of the wind, it must be ap- 

 parent that, where the horizontal cast is used, and 

 often where the cast is not strictly horizontal, the 

 left bank has the advantage over the right that 

 the rod and line are less displayed, and far less 

 likely to alarm a wary fish under the angler's own 

 bank than a rod held more or less over the stream ; 

 and, naturally, it is only to a fish under the 

 angler's own bank that the cross-country cast is 

 made. 



Secondly, there is the advantage that little of the 

 line — possibly not all of the gut, even — strikes the 



