V.—FINE FEATHERS.
There is a certain school of anglers that go about the business of fishing with much gravity. You should hear the Great Neal discourse of their profundities. Lacking that privilege, you may conceive a pair of these anglers met beside a river, seeking to discover which of the many insects flying about is preferred by the trout on that particular morning. There is disagreement, or there is lack of evidence. It is decided to catch a trout, eviscerate him, and obtain internal and indisputable evidence. For the cast any fly is used, and when the trout is opened it is learned that he has been feeding on a small black insect; whereupon our anglers tie a number of flies to resemble that insect, and proceed solemnly with their day’s work. Though the trout scorn their fine feathers, they will not fish with any fly.
With the subtleties of this school I have no sympathy. They might be of profit on waters that are much fished, but they are wasted on the [p 76] />]wilderness, where the trout will rise to almost any lure. When I make an expedition I take along two or three dozen flies, for the mere pleasure of looking at them, and rearranging them in the fly-book; but I wet less than half a dozen. On the Delectable River we cast only when trout are needed for the frypan. You are to picture canoes drawn up on a sandbar, and a ribbon of black smoke curling from a strip of birch bark that marks the beginning of a fire. It is time to get the fish. So I set up my rod and walk upstream perhaps a hundred yards, casting on the current where it cuts under the farther bank. Almost every cast evokes a trout; this one takes the tail fly, a Silver Doctor, the next one strikes the Bucktail dropper; any other flies would serve. The largest fish is taken on my return, from under the stern of one of the canoes. Where trout are so plentiful and so unwary, there is no call for the preparatory work of the evisceration school of anglers.
My reason for using a dropper fly is not to offer the trout two counterfeit insects differing in shape or color; as commonly attached to the leader, the dropper swims with the tail fly. “Sir,” said the Great Neal, in the manner of Samuel Johnson, “when the dropper is properly attached, as I attach it, two aspects of the lure are presented to the fish, the one fly moving [p 77] />]through the water, the other dancing an inch or so above. This, Sir, is how I tie it.”
And sitting at the Oracle’s feet, ye learn “all ye need to know.”