[from Harry Druidale, Fisherman ..., 1898]

PREFACE

THE year in which the greater part of this book has been written forms an epoch in the annals of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Diamond Jubilee of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.

Many of the members of Her Majesty's family have given their royal countenance to the sports of the people, and to none more than to the gentle craft. Her Majesty's grand-daughter, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Fife, has especially distinguished herself amongst the mighty salmon, no less than six fish having fallen to her rod in one day, I believe, on more than one occasion. It is gratifying to a humble angler to feel that the Royal Family sympatbise so much with the sport so dear to him as to identify themselves with it.

The author has endeavoured to portray the sport of angling for the last twenty years, up to and including the year of the Diamond Jubilee, from the point of view of the angler whose sport has been in well-fished waters, not in the highly-preserved waters only open to the wealthy few; and this the indulgent reader must bear in mind, should he be inclined to be a little sarcastic on the sport recorded. The record, so far as it goes, is a faithful one, and shows what sport may be obtained by an angler of moderate ability at the date of the Diamond Jubilee in well-fished club waters. The comparative weight of trout captured in several well-known rivers should interest the north country angler.

The author has to a great extent trodden on ground which has not had a Thomas Todd Stoddart or Francis Francis to illustrate it. He hopes that the juvenile angler or would-be angler may derive some benefit from the chapters on the various modes of fishing for trout, which are inserted somewhat late in the book in order that the youthful reader may have his interest aroused by such light reading as the Druidale Fishing Excursion and Bivouac.

The author also hopes that anglers who contemplate becoming members of the Kilnsey Angling Club, or the Yorkshire Anglers' Association, may derive benefit from his experiences.

The illustrations are from photographs taken by Charles Herbert Cadman, an amateur photographer.

HARRY DRUIDALE. [Henry Cadman - C H Cadman was his son, b.1879]

HARROGATE, November 1897.