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. In Stewart on the Wet Fly, editor Paul Schullery brings together Stewart's key fly-fishing writings in the first American edition of the work of this historic figure. 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. In preparing this new edition of Stewart's seminal work, Schullery discovers another layer of significance by wondering if Stewart's example as an angler-naturalist may be his greatest contribution to the sport. Schullery concludes that Stewart's intense scrutiny of the natural world, and high level of applied empiricism in his own angling experiments, may be the most inspiring things about the book.