CHOICE OF PATTERN loi 



that they would not rise to any fly for at least six 

 weeks. 



Throughout this book it is my aim to abstain from 



unduly praising the new pat- 

 Patterns of welsh- terns or depreciating the old 

 man's button. standards. In this case I must 



pray of my readers, even those 

 who are the most enthusiastic advocates of the old 

 patterns, to take one of each sex of the natural Welsh- 

 man's button from the water and compare them with 

 correctly dressed specimens of No. 29 the male and 

 No. 30 the female. He should then compare them 

 with flies dressed to the old standard pattern with 

 wings from the peacock underwing feathers and the 

 rough bronze peacock herl body. It will be surprising 

 if he does not at once realize the great strides made 

 towards imitating nature in the new patterns, and it is 

 not unlikely that he will discard the old standard 

 Welshman's button from his list. 



The male is, in my opinion, the more killing of the 

 two, although I have known days and evenings when 

 a rising trout would not look at the male and took the 

 female. A notable example of this occurred in 1910, 

 when, after a number of days during which the male 

 had been almost exclusively successful, Martin E. 

 Mosely, fishing with me on the evening of June i ith, 

 could not get a rise out of a feeding fish with the 

 male. He changed to the female and at once killed 

 a handsome male trout of 3 lb. 11 oz. The next day, 

 the 1 2th, was a Sunday, and consequently under the 



