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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION WHEN first infected with the fever of Angling, more years ago than I care to count up, my ambition was to catch every species of freshwater fish, from the minnow up to the salmon, which inhabits our British waters. That satisfied, my next desire was to write a work, which should contain within one volume (as far as might be possible) the fullest and most varied information upon angling generally, in each branch of the art which had ever been published; and with this resolve I commenced collecting the matter for the present work nearly twenty years ago. Taken up and laid aside from time to time, little by little it has steadily progressed towards completion. In the course of that period of time I have taken occasion to visit and to fish nearly every river of note in the kingdom; my connection with The Field affording me peculiar facilities for obtaining permission to fish very many waters which are closely locked against the general public; and I have roamed England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland over to gather fresh knowledge, and to put it into a practical and concentrated form for the use of my readers. A modern work on general Angling has long been much needed. We have works upon fly-fishing, and excellent ones too; we have good works upon spinning and trolling; we have few modern works upon bottom-fishing at large; and we have no modern book upon all of these styles combined, since the last book of any note of that sort, which is "Ephemera's" Handbook, was published twenty years ago, and angling has made great strides in the last twenty years. One thing the student may rely on, viz. all that is set down here is the result of carefully conned experience, often proved. I have not entered the realms of fancy, and I have not borrowed the experience of others as though it were of my own, and of my own origination. I have endeavoured to borrow as little as possible: and where I have been obliged to borrow, I have striven to make the fullest acknowledgment of my indebtedness, and to do that justice to others which I hope to have done to myself. The branch in which I have been the most compelled to borrow is in the trout flies. The reason of this is obvious, as the flies on wliich the trout feed are the same to-day that they were 500 years ago. Perhaps to Mr. Ronalds' 'Fly-fisher's Entomology I am the largest debtor, and a better authority one could not borrow from, since it is by far the best work that has ever been written on the subject. But it must not be forgotten that even Ronalds borrowed these flies for the most part in his turn. Let the reader turn to the earliest book published on fly-fishing, and he will there find described by Cotton all the best flies taken by the trout in the present day, and which have been more or less reproduced and described by every subsequent angling writer up to Ronalds. There we find the red-brown (February red), the blue and yellow duns, the house fly, the green drake, the hawthorn, the black gnat, the ant fly, the whirling dun, the peacock, the barm fly, and other flies given by the very names they are now known by: while most of the remaining flies which the modern angler uses are also described, though under other names; but they can easily be identified by the method of dressing laid down for each of them. These flies, then, are again reproduced in Ronalds, who for the first time describes and classifies them entomologically, thus rendering to the fly-fisher one of the greatest boons conferred upon the art since Cotton's day, as the angler is through Ronalds enabled to identify each fly with nature, and to study its habits and changes. All that I have been able to do while following in so well-marked and beaten a track and it is all that any other author could do has been to make such suggestions upon the dressing of the various flies as may render them, in my opinion, better imitations of nature than have yet been made public, and to select and make such suggestions as to those flies which are the greatest favourites with the fish, as may simplify matters to the beginner. In inducting the tyro into the mysteries of the art, I have endeavoured to make every direction and information as clear and practical as possible. This work is intended to be a useful and not merely a decorative one ; thus, the plates are not for the sake of ornamentation, but for direction, and as an aid to the student of tackle making and fly tying. Each illustration of tackle is really needed, and the flies shown are not a mere selection of gorgeous and pretty subjects, or I should have chosen very differently; but each fly is a specimen of some separate class of flies, in which a special peculiarity of manufacture is evident. I have to thank many kind friends for assistance in lending tackle and flies as subjects for the engravings, and also for description, as will be found in the body of the work. I have given much time to this book, but I have given it willingly, for it was in deed and in truth a labour of love. Whether the angling public, to whom I dedicate it (desiring no more potent patron), will appreciate my labours remains to be seen, and so, without further apology if an attempt to supply a long-felt and obvious want, the existence of which few persons have been in a position to know and feel so well as myself, be thought to require an apology into their hands I commit it. FRANCIS FRANCIS. THE FIRS, 1867. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION IN preparing the Second Edition of this work, it has been my endeavour to rectify the faults and omissions contained in the First. In collecting and arranging material coming under so many heads, and where similarity of method, etc., often runs one department into another and especially when many years have been occupied in the preparation of the work the difficulties of arrangement and of avoiding confusion are much greater than would be supposed. Whatever oversights, therefore, may have occurred from these causes, I have now endeavoured as far as possible to correct; and I have also added, for the greater convenience of reference, both for the angler and fly tyer, an index of the fullest possible nature, and I trust it may be found useful. I have further added between thirty and forty pages to the work itself; having, for the purpose of perfecting the fly list to the various salmon rivers in the kingdom, given new lists of flies for no less than ten more rivers than were given in the First Edition, and appended additional information on lake trout flies, general tackle making, and many other subjects which appeared to me to be capable of advantageous expansion. I have now but to convey my thanks to the angling public for very marked favour extended to the First Edition of this work, which, I am informed (by those who have been in the habit of selling angling works for very many years), sold more rapidly than any other angling book produced during the last quarter of a century, a practical compliment which authors of all kinds very fully appreciate ; and I can but hope that the Second Edition may be found even more worthy of favour than the First. FRANCIS FRANCIS. August, 1867. Contents INTRODUCTION BY SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, Ex. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION CHAPTER I - BOTTOM FISHING The Origin of Angling; Pond-Fishing; Punt-Fishing; The Norfolk Style; Bank-Fishing; The Gudgeon; The Pope; The Bleak; The Roach; The Rudd; The Dace; The Chub; The Barbel. CHAPTER II - BOTTOM-FISHING continued Nottingham Angling; Casting from the Reel; Daceing; Light Corking; The Slider, etc. CHAPTER III - BOTTOM-FISHING continued The Bream; The Carp; The Tench; The Eel; The Perch; Paternostering, etc. CHAPTER IV - MID-WATER FISHING The Pike; Spinning; Trolling with the Dead Gorge; Live Baiting, etc. CHAPTER V - ARTIFICIAL FLY-FISHING Varieties of Trout; Instructions as to Rods and Tackle; How to use them; Weather; How to Choose Flies; Dress Night-Fishing. CHAPTER VI - ARTIFICIAL FLIES Contrast of Systems; Copying Nature and Copying Nothing; List of Files for each Month. CHAPTER VII - ON LAKE-FISHING, ETC. Lake-Fishing; Daping; The Creeper; The Beetle; The Worm. CHAPTER VIII - SPINNING FOR TROUT Spinning for Large Trout; Spinning for Trout in Small Streams; The Par-Tail; The Grayling. CHAPTER IX - THE SALMON The Rod; The Reel and Line; How to use them; Casting; Striking; Playing a Salmon; Sea Trout Fishing CHAPTER X - SALMON FLIES List of Salmon Flies; General Flies; List of Flies for Scotch Rivers . CHAPTER XI - SALMON FLIES continued List of Flies for Irish Rivers CHAPTER XII - SALMON FLIES -continued List of Flies for Wales and England; List of Sea Trout Flies. CHAPTER XIII - TACKLE MAKING AND FLY DRESSING On making Tackle, Knotting, etc.; How to Dress the Trout Fly; The Method of Dressing the Salmon Fly. CHAPTER XIV - CONCLUSION On Hooks; The Bait Table; Recipes and Notabilia. INDEX End of Preview. RETURN to Main Titles Index or Self Reliance Hunting, Skinning & Tanning
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