When you have hooked the fish, always handle him as if he were but lightly secured. Do not attempt to lift him out or yank him up to you. Keep the line gently taut, and softly lead the prize out of rough water or away from stones, grasses, logs, or tree branches. Do not let him come to the surface until he is pretty well exhausted and you are about to put him in the landing-net. If he is a large fish, tow him ashore if the water edge will permit. Where there are overhanging banks this cannot be done. Do not be in a hurry to get him out of the water. Be calm and work carefully.
If the fish is large enough to overcome the reel click and run off the line, let him do so, but check him and guide him according to any obstruction there may be.
When he has rushed here and there for some little time with his mouth open and with a constant check—the line should always be taut—he will become tired, and when he is tired he will not rush. Then softly reel him in, being careful not to let him come in contact with a stone or weed, which is sure to arouse him again. Reel him up quickly, without making a splashing swoop, and he will soon grace your creel.
Several persons have expressed an objection to a list of flies I once named, saying a good Angler might kill just as many trout on quarter the number.
Any Angler can take even less than one quarter of the enumerated list and catch fully as many brook trout as one who might use all of the flies mentioned—if he can pick out the ones the trout are rising to without trying them all until he discovers the killing ones. A chef might please his master with one or two of the forty courses billed, if he knew what the man wanted.
Sometimes an Angler can judge the appropriate fly to use by observing nature in seeing trout rise to the live fly; but, there are times when trout are not rising, times when they are tired of the fly upon the water, and times when the real fly is not on the wing. Then the Angler is expected to take matters in his own hands and whip about quietly until he discovers the proper patterns. It is better to try for the right flies with a list of twenty-nine than whip over a list of a thousand or more. I have learned from experience that trout, like human beings, are in love with a variety of foods at different times. Their tastes change with the months, the weeks, the days, the hours, and, under certain conditions which I will presently explain, the minutes.
"... fish will not bite constantly, nor every day. They have peculiar, unexplainable moods that continuing favoring conditions of water, wind, and weather cannot control" (Eugene McCarthy, Familiar Fish).
When I mention twenty-nine different patterns as being seasonable at a stated period, I do not mean to say that the trout will rise to them all and at any time and under all conditions. In the first place, the person using them might be a tyro unfamiliar with the gentle art, the streams might be dried up, there might be an earthquake, the flies might be too large, too coarse, and for that matter a thousand other conditions might interfere. I fish dozens of streams in different localities several times every month during the legal season, and I have been a fond Angler—if not a skillful one—since my tenth birthday. Experience on the streams, a true love for nature, and a careful attention to my notebook enable me to separate the artificial flies into monthly lists. No man can class them into weekly or daily lots.
"When a fly is said to be in season it does not follow that it is abroad on every day of its existence" (Alfred Ronalds).