Stewart on the Wet Fly

Lessons from a Master Technician

• A key influence in modern soft-hackle and emerger fishing
• Insight into the natural world combined with fly pattern theory

William Stewart's writings burst upon the angling world in 1857 in a flurry of acclaim and controversy. In a provocative mixture of traditionalism and iconoclasm, Stewart aimed to reshape the angling habits of his day in the most fundamental way. His forceful arguments on behalf of upstream fishing and his advocacy of shorter, stiffer fly rods were an important early influence in the rise of dry-fly fishing in the later 1800s.
Schullery brings together Stewart's key fly-fishing writings in this first American edition. Many of the rationales behind practices that we take for granted today were first and best expressed by Stewart, and his strong opinions on fly pattern theory still have the power to make us reconsider principles and habits we have perhaps grown too comfortable with.