loo THE DRY-FLY MAN'S HANDBOOK 



entire chapter of " Modern Development of the Dry- 

 Fly" is devoted to the Welshman's button, and I 

 entreat my reader to study this chapter carefully. 

 He may be one who regrets poignantly the decline 

 of the mayfly. He may, like the late Mr. T. P. 

 Hawksley, stigmatize mayfly fishing as a form of 

 poaching almost as reprehensible for the dry-fly man 

 as worming or spinning the minnow. Or he may 

 hold an opinion somewhere between these two 

 extremes. He will in any case agree with me that 

 the presence and increase* from year to year of this 

 interesting member of the family of the Sericosto- 

 matidae, known to all good anglers as the Welshman's 

 button, do to a great extent provide a fair substitute 

 for the green drake itself. 



Personally I do not regret the mayfly. It was, to 

 my mind, the most disappointing form of dry-fly 

 fishing. Hordes of men who never wetted a line 

 during the rest of the season came down the moment 

 they were warned of its first appearance. From 

 morn to dewy eve they paraded the banks, hammered 

 away at the fish whether bulging at the nymph, 

 rising at the subimago, or imago, or even at times 

 indulged in the time-honoured ckuck-and-chance-it 

 principle. They pricked and scared fish after fish, 

 and often succeeded in rendering the big ones so shy 

 as to be unapproachable for a considerable time. It 

 was this that led to the erroneous belief that after 

 the mayfly the trout were so gorged and lazy 



* Unfortunately an exception to this occurred in 191 1. 



