104 FLY FISHING FOR TEOUT. 



Sir Humphry Davy, and possibly Younger. 



So much for the names : now to collect the 

 votes. Franck tells you to start at the head of 

 the stream, at least I think he means that, 

 though Franck never talks plain English. But 

 he shall be counted downstream. Barker is the 

 same. Venables, as has been seen, is neutral, 

 inclining to down. What of Cotton? He is 

 generally classed as a downstream man, and 

 certainly his phrase 'fine and far off' seems to 

 put him in that category. This, however, is 

 not the whole truth. He tells his pupil to have 

 the wind always at his back, and to fish up or 

 down the river as the wind serves. He there- 

 fore fished not downstream, but down wind, 

 and indeed he could do little else, using as he 

 did a whippy single-handed rod fifteen to 

 eighteen feet long. But he knew the advantage 

 of fishing still water upstream. Thus on the 

 second day of the Dialogue, when 'the wind 

 curies the water and blows the right way' 

 Cotton sets his pupil to 'angle up the still deep,' 

 and therefore chooses a day of upstream wind 

 in which to fish still water. And let it 

 be noted that Cotton is the inventor of 

 upstream worm fishing. Cotton is there- 

 fore not the downstream man he is gener- 

 ally supposed to be, and he also must be 

 classed as neutral. Chetham (1681) is on the 

 whole a downstream man, for both he and also 

 the True Art of Angling (1696) tell you to fish 

 upstream in clear water with the natural fly. 



