The trout referred to is the true brook trout, scientifically alluded to as Salvelinus fontinalis and commonly called, besides brook trout (its most popular name), speckled trout, mountain trout, speckled beauty, spotted trout, etc.
The fly-fishing treated of is that popular form that is most indulged in by the Eastern trout fly-fisherman—small-stream fishing in the mountains and wooded level lands that "carries us," as Davy wrote as far away as 1828, "into the most wild and beautiful scenery of nature to the clear and lovely streams that gush from the high ranges of elevated hills."
Above all other styles of fly-fishing, it calls for the most delicate tackle and the very daintiest hand.
"How delightful," says the author of Salmonia, "in the early spring, after the dull and tedious time of winter, when the frosts disappear and the sunshine warms the earth and waters, to wander forth by some clear stream, to see the leaf bursting from the purple bud, to scent the odors of the bank perfumed by the violet, and enameled, as it were, with the primrose and the daisy; to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose bright blossoms are filled with the music of the bee; and on the surface of the waters to view the gaudy flies sparkling like animated gems in the sunbeams, whilst the bright and beautiful trout is watching them from below; to hear the twittering of the water-birds, who, alarmed at your approach, rapidly hide themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water-lily; and, as the season advances, to find all these objects changed for others of the same kind, but better and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend as it were for the May fly, and till in pursuing your amusement in the calm and balmy evening you are serenaded by the songs of the cheerful thrush, performing the offices of paternal love in thickets ornamented with the rose and woodbine."
The other forms of fly-fishing for trout, the pursuit of larger specimens of the same species in larger waters, the lakes and ponds and rivers—all equally inviting by their gentle requirements and the "beautiful scenery of nature"—deserve special treatment, because, as in fly-fishing for salmon (salmo salar), the very top notch of all forms of angling, the play, the player, the scenes, and the accessories are sufficiently different to confound the reader I am mainly endeavoring to amuse with these particular lines.
Small stream fly-fishing for brook trout belongs in a class just between fly-fishing for the brook trout of broader waters, the lakes and ponds, and fly-fishing for salmon in the lordly rivers of Maine and Canada.
The brook trout is angled for in the spring and summer, principally with the artificial fly, and by the chivalric Angler only with the artificial fly, though many greedy fishermen of trifling experience and wholly deprived of the true spirit of angling—in that they fish for the fish alone and judge their day and play solely by the size of their catch—contrive to convince us that the live lure is equally honorable, notwithstanding that the cruel, clumsy, uncleanly, unfair, wasteful practice of live-bait trout fishing is condemned by every truly gentle disciple and practical authority.
Most advocates of live-bait trout fishing, who would have us believe that their method is entitled to recognition in the same category with fly-fishing, proudly proclaim that this should be because they "can catch more fish with the worm or minnow than the Angler can catch with his fly."
If this reasoning is to settle the debate, if killing and quantity compose the Angler's axiom, why not resort to still more productive means—dynamite, or net the stream instead of gently fishing it?
No, the trout fly-fisherman abhors trout bait-fishing for the same reason the wing shot prefers his appropriate arm to a cannon; the yachtsman, his gentle craft to a man-o'-war; the horseman, his trained mount to a locomotive; the archer, his arrow instead of a harpoon; and so I might go on in similes that would burlesque every form of recreative amusement in the world.