THE ETHICS OF THE DRY-FLY 75 



invariably fishes upstream these scathing criticisms 

 do not apply to him. I will at once freely admit 

 that upstream wet- fly fishing is not so harmful on a 

 chalk-stream as the same method pursued downstream. 

 But in my view the continual flogging and the continual 

 movement of the angler making his way along the bank, 

 too often in full view of the trout, are, however, very 

 nearly as destructive of the confidence of the fish as 

 downstream fishing. Then, too, the distance covered by 

 the persistent flogger is so great that the limits of any 

 ordinary length of private water will be covered many 

 times in an ordinary day's fishing. The excuse which 

 is sometimes advanced to palliate the breach of eti- 

 quette committed in using sunk fly on a dry-fly 

 stream is that the aim of a fly fisherman is to kill 

 fish with a fly whether wet or dry — surely this should 

 not be so on a water preserved entirely for dry-fly. 



1 am told, however, that there is a school of fly 

 fishermen who only fish the sunk fly over a feeding 

 fish or one in position if it will not take a floating fly. 

 This, they urge, is a third method of wet-fly fishing, 

 the other two being the more ordinary of fishing the 

 water with sunk fly either upstream or downstream. 

 Candidly I have never seen this method in practice, 

 and I have grave doubts as to its efficacy. 



The St. Andrews authorities, after compiling the 

 rules of the game of golf and fixing penalties for any 

 breach of them, supplemented these rules by issuing 

 a separate document, entitled " The Etiquette of 

 Golf" For the breach of the maxims laid down in 



