MAY-FLY FISHING, 377 
Wings : Woodcock. 
Lody: Pale condor, nearly but not quite white. 
ffackle: Pale ginger cock, carried down the body from 
shoulder to tail. It should be fully hackled, and if one hackle 
is insufficient, two should be used. 
If, after all, you cannot rise the fish ; if all changes of fly are 
useless ; if you cannot throw accurately against the wind ; if 
the trout keep coming short, and you either do not touch them 
or at best only hook them lightly and they get away ; if the 
hooked fish weed you and break ; if hook after hook snaps off 
at the barb; if you get cast after cast broken, or perhaps finish 
up by smashing your favourite rod short off at the butt ferrule, 
one parting word of advice. Do not swear at the river or the 
fish in it; do not abuse the hook-maker or fly-dresser; do not 
rave at the rotten gut, or heap blasphemy on the head of the 
unfortunate man who made your rod. All this is childish, use- 
less, and unsportsmanlike. Probably your non-success is due 
in most respects to your own shortcomings. You cannot rise 
your fish with any pattern ot fly in your book, because, in all 
probability, he has seen you or your rod waving over the water, 
and is fully alive to the fact that he is being fished for. You 
cannot get your fly out against the wind, because you hurry 
your rod and use undue force, or because you will not finish 
the cast with rod-point close down to the water. You fail to 
hook your fish, because you strike too soon or too late. The 
fish weed you, because you lose your presence of mind when 
they are first hooked, instead of resolutely dragging them at 
once down stream over the top of the weeds, or giving them 
plenty of slack line, according to circumstances, Your casts 
and hooks are broken, because either you do not test them, or 
else you put undue strain on them. 
As to the fracture of that pet rod, it may be due to a thou- 
sand-and-one causes besides the roguery of the rod-maker. 
Perhaps you hurry 11 too much. Perhaps every time you get 
a small piece of grass or weed on your hook you lash a long’ 
line backwards and forwards, with great violence to try and 
