A HANDY GUIDE 
TO 
DRY-FLY FISHING. 
“ If at first you don’t succeed 
Try, try, and try again.” 
Nursery Rhyme. 
PROLOGUE: 
ENTHUSIA S TIC A L AND STIMULATIVE. 
The elegant art of dry-fly fishing has made enormous 
strides during the last few years. Fifty years ago 
it was hardly known. Fly-fishing itself dates back 
to long before the time of Izaak Walton. Fishing 
with the natural fly, in the form of dibbing, is almost 
as old as the art of fishing itself, but the art of 
making artificial flies and angling with them is 
probably very little older than the epoch of Walton, 
though the father of modern angling appears to have 
known nothing of dry-fly fishing. Who its real 
inventor was I do not know. All I know is that he 
ought to be immortalized whoever he was. Perhaps 
some reader more learned in the history of the art 
than I am may inform us that so we may canonize 
him in our grateful memories. 
The art seems to claim the southern part of our 
island for the place of its nativity, and the practice 
