FISHING DREAMS. By T.T. Phelps.

1949 1st edition. 8vo (142 x 220mm). Pp242. Colour frontispiece painting and colour plate of flies, b/w photograph plates, b/w line illustrations. Light blue cloth, spine titled in gilt.

Wide-ranging angling essays, many of them based on the author's extensive experience on the River Laerdal in Norway. These include chapters on the Laerdal, its valley and salmon pools, fishing the prawn, greased line fishing, casting, gillies, and dry-fly-fishing for sea-trout. Away from Norway, he covers chalk stream fishing and management (principally on the Test, Itchen and Whitewater), pollution, the mayfly, grayling, dry fly and nymph fishing, and angling travels to Siam and Japan, Canada and Scotland. The author was a pioneer of dry-fly fishing for sea-trout, beginning with the method in 1902, and eventually using it almost exclusively when fishing for Norwegian sea-trout. It is interesting to note that he failed with it completely on a river in the west of Scotland, when a change to the wet fly brought an immediate response.