32 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



at the present day? It is a long time truly 

 since that year 1496, and many things have 

 changed in the interval, sport among them. 

 Gone are the hawker and the fowler, their 

 occupation merged in that of the shooter. 

 Fishing has changed too. Perhaps hunting, 

 especially hunting the hart, has altered the 

 least : for were Gaston de Foix or Edward Duke 

 of York to be present at a meet of the Devon 

 and Somerset staghounds they would find 

 essentials unaltered. And when the harbourer 

 told them of the stag he had harboured, what 

 signs of venery he had noted, and what 

 conclusions he drew as to its size and age, why 

 he and they would talk the same language, 

 though five hundred years did separate them. 

 But what about the fly fisher ? How did he fish 

 at the end of the fifteenth century, when the 

 Wars of the Eoses were over and the Reforma- 

 tion yet to come ? 



Success in fishing depends on three factors : 

 the angler's equipment, his knowledge of 

 fish life, and his skill in making use of these 

 in presenting the fly to the fish. From the 

 Treatise we know much about the first two 

 factors, but hardly anything of the third, for 

 we do not know how a fisherman fished. He 

 was not handicapped by his equipment, if thick 

 lines are excepted, and even this handicap could 

 largely be neutralised by keeping the rod point 

 high and the line off the water. There is 

 nothing wrong with his flies, though it must 



