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say four inches and the second three, and they should be 

 tied one about a foot or eighteen inches from the end of the 

 main line, and the other half way between that and the 

 stretcher. For very short casts in small brooks more 

 very small fish can be taken in a given time if the three 

 flies are placed only about two feet apart and with long 

 strands to the droppers, so that they may be all trailed 

 along the surface together. This arrangement is to be 

 adopted by enthusiastic anglers who aspire to take a 

 thousand trout averaging an ounce apiece in a summer 

 day, but will not suit fishermen who seek larger fish. 



A neat and ingenious invention in fiy books has been 

 made by a gentleman in New York, for holding the flies 

 on small hooks like those of the hooks and eyes of ladies' 

 dresses. The plan is not patented and enables the 

 angler to quickly remove or replace one fly without dis- 

 turbing the others. It may be applied to an ordinary 

 letter envelope of parchment paper which can be made 

 to hold a dozen flies and answer all the purposes of a 

 fly -book, for a day's fishing. 



Hooks. — As to the selection of the best shape of hook 

 for fly tying, there is a difference of opinion between the 

 editors of this work, and the reader will have to choose 

 between them. One favors his own discovery and what 

 has come to be called the "needlepoint hook," because 

 it was originally made from the pointed half of a needle, 

 and the other prefers the sproat. The needle point hook 

 has no barb, being in this particular like the hook of the 

 Chinese, but the point is carried well forward. There is 

 no danger from what most people would suppose might 

 be the objection to it — the loss of fish after they are 

 hooked. It holds precisely as well as if it had a barb, but 

 the point is so long that there is risk — in the opinion of 

 the associated author— of the fish rising short and pull- 



