FISHERMAN'S FLY AND OTHER STUDIES. By David Jacques.

1965 1st edition. 8vo (140 x 220mm). Pp124. Colour frontispiece, b/w photographs, brief bibliography. Brown boards, spine titled in gilt. 30s.

"Fisherman's Fly" is a chronicle of the life of the grannom, an important caddis-fly for the flyfisher, on the River Test. The "other studies" are essays on mayflies and other flies of the chalkstreams, a "fanfare to Halford", and more on the chalkstreams and their entomology". Millions of words have been written about fishermen's flies. Their appearance, their periods, their habitats, their anatomy, and their more easily observed characteristics have been extensively studied and described over and over again. But of their secluded aquatic activities little has been discovered, due no doubt to the inaccessibility to human eyes of the medium in which they spend the major part of their lives. Fisherman's Fly is unique in that it presents for the first time a chronicle, hitherto unknown, of the underwater existence of one group of these flies. The story, told in unscientific language, describes them from the egg stage to their death, as mature winged insects, after they have fulfilled nature's prescription for the continuation of the species". Contents include:- Fisherman's fly; Fly-fishing ideology; The blue-winged olive; The sherry spinner; The mayfly; The plankton net; The take of the brown trout; Dry-fly animation; Low water fishing; Tolerance in dry flies; Indiscriminate mating of insects; Unblinded by science; Dry-fly presentation; Curiosities of trout fishing; Fanfare for Halford; A salmon in the donkey pool; The ex-president.