PREFACE By the Author. WHILE our sporting instincts will be aroused by the difficulties and thrilled by the triumphs of fly fishing, the artistic and poetic side of our temperament will be as strongly appealed to, and affected, by the surroundings of the salmon rivers and trout streams on which our fly may be cast. The salmon river will inspire the soul with the strength and force of its beauty, and invigorate the body with the health-giving scent of its pine forests and heather the trout stream will charm our mind, and lull our senses into delicious content, as we listen to the rippling note of its liquid harmony and inhale the delicate perfume of its thousand surrounding flowers. The pride of place as regards the very pink of Natures charms must be given to our trout streams the lavish profusion of their summer beauty and the ambrosial essence of their woodland delights will efface the cares and stress of modern life, and refresh our jaded senses with the delights of their never ending variety of delicate beauties. These haunts of the trout will soothe our wearied eyes with the delicate shades of their Ieafy surroundings and with the exquisite pictures reflected in their limpid depths, whiIe our city-tainted nostrils wiIl be cleansed by the delicious fragrance of the country side. Hence it is that even the novice in fly fishing, vexed as he may be by his want of success, is consoled and comforted by the beauty surrounding him, and by the lessons which he absorbs with every breath drawn from the scented bosom of Mother Nature. There is no experience he wiIl find more enjoyable or pastime more delightful, than those associated with that perfection of natural life which is to be found by an EngIish trout stream. Hardly any water-side exists which fails to interest and attract the fisherman, and the pleasure of wandering by the scented side of any brook or sylvan stream, and watching the varying beauties and the wonder of its natural life, is always enhanced by the infinite probabiIities of Trout which it suggests to the ardent angler, and the recollections which it arouses of sunlit days and happy associations of the past.When one recalls the pIeasure and assistance which has been derived from the literature devoted to fly fishing, the works of Izaak WaIton, Buxton, Cholmondeley, Pennell, Maxwell, Francis, Marston, Sheringham, Hart-Davis, Long, Thomas, Halford, Dewar, Hutchinson, and many others, the delightful reminiscences which have been revived, and the extensive fields of sport which have thus been thrown open, it would indeed be ungrateful to deny the efficacy of written instructions in this delightful science. If it be desirable and necessary to obtain help in order to become a proficient fly fisherman, the author admits the greater advantages of personal tuition when it is obtainable. But, on the other hand, he is confident that, by explaining in simple language the science of casting and fishing with the trout fly, in similar terms to those which he uses when teaching the student personally, the reader will, by careful attention, find himself competent to take the field rod in hand, and rapidly acquire a success which will well repay him for his trouble. It is to those who are anxious to learn, but who, at the same time, may regard this delightful accomplishment as not only difficult to acquire, but necessitating a greater expenditure of time and money than may possibly be at their disposal, that the Author has written these pages...