GENERAL DESCRIPTION 



fake anglers, especially at the tournaments. There 

 are prize-winners at the score who are dunces on the 

 riverside. 



But what is fly-fishing in esse ? I am always shy of 

 the angler who talks of the advantage of shotting his 

 fly and letting it sink a foot or two. That man is not 

 a fly-fisher in fact. Why ? Well, what is a fly? Is 

 it an insect which dives, lives under water, and sinks 

 to the bottom like a corpse over the ship's side at sea ? 

 Oh, no ! A fly is a creature of the upper air, now 

 touching the surface of the water, anon soaring aloft, 

 here an instant and gone the next, restless as a hum- 

 ming-bird, and seldom still. Why, the shotted fly 

 has not even the attributes of a beetle, or grasshopper, 

 or any other clumsy insect which happens to have 

 wings. It has no buoyancy or life. It cannot rise or 

 even maintain itself on the surface unless the current 

 be swift. It is inanimate and dead. Fly-fishing in- 

 deed I Why, man alive ! fly-fishing is an art which 

 brooks no compromise. Cross it with other methods, 

 and you have a nonentity, if not a sterile hybrid. In 

 the same category I place all automatic devices and 

 combination baits. Such mechanical " jacks-at-all- 

 trades" simply demoralize the true angler and kill 

 genius. They are inventions of necessity and not of 

 sport. Now, may the reader pardon me ! as this paper 

 was not intended to be a dissertation on angling tech- 

 nology, but a general description of the trout family, 

 and his idiosyncrasies. Summarily, the essence of the 



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