3o6 THE DRY-FLY MAN'S HANDBOOK 



in the stream, he is courting disaster. On this point 

 I can speak feelingly. Four of us took a twenty-one- 

 year lease of some miles of fishing on a river in which 

 the trout were said only to rise well during the mayfly. 

 We killed down pike and coarse fish in great numbers, 

 stocked with the very best two-year-olds we could 

 grow in a stew, and after great expenditure and four 

 years of disappointment we were glad to surrender 

 our lease and seek our sport elsewhere. 



Where possible, too, it is well to find out what is 

 the reputation of the particular length of the river 

 offered. There are stretches even on the very best 

 of south-country chalk-streams, on which the fish 

 seldom take surface food, and these fisheries are of 

 little or no value to the dry-fly man who is a 

 purist and does not affect the methods of the wet-fly 

 man. 



I can give an example of a length of something 

 short of one and a-half miles of a first-class chalk- 

 stream of which I have heard some particulars from 

 time to time since it was offered to me more than a 

 quarter of a century ago. I did not entertain it then 

 because I did not care to go to the expense of making 

 a water which had been neglected for many years, 

 and would not, in my opinion, ever be anything better 

 than third-rate. The greater part of this fishery is 

 deep and sluggish, affording congenial quarters for 

 numbers of large and small pike and other coarse 

 fish, while the trout are generally large in average 

 size, but very few in numbers. 



