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CHALK-STREAM FISHING WITH THE DRY 
FLY, AND MAY-FLY FISHING. 
CHALK-STREAM FISHING WITH THE DRY FLY, 
Tuat different rivers require different styles of fishing, or, in 
other words, that the highest art as practised in one locality 
is occasionally almost useless in another, may now, I think, be 
laid down as an angling axiom; certainly it is a rule recognised 
in practice by, at any rate, most fly fishers of experience. On 
one river trout will take the fly ‘wet,’ on another it is almost 
essential to use it ‘dry ;’ whilst on some waters, like the well- 
known lakes of Westmeath, for example, the only time when 
anything worth calling sport is to be had is whilst the ‘ fly is up,’ 
that is, during the season of the appearance of the May fly, and 
then the lure must be the natural insect itself used with a blow 
line. The extent to which these differences may exist in dif- 
ferent streams is often only found out by the fly fisher through 
the disagreeable experience of empty baskets, on first visiting a 
new locality. Many and many a time has an angler, skilled in 
all the niceties of trout fishing in his own Highland streams, 
been utterly baffled when he first essayed his luck with the 
well-fed, not to say pampered, fish of Test, Itchen, or Kennet. 
And it is not difficult to find the explanation. The character 
of the clear chalk streams of the south is entirely different from 
that of the rocky mountain rivers and peat-stained torrents of 
the Highlands, and consequently the habits of the fish are also 
widely different. The chalk-streams are wonderfully prolific 
in insect life, far and away beyond anything of which the trout 
of Scotland or Ireland have for the most part any experience, 
