The coat and general clothing should be of a dead-grass, gray, or light brown color. Have plenty of pockets, and tie a string to nearly everything you carry in them, so you cannot lose them if they fall from your hands.
The flies—every known variety of trout fly, providing you order these of the finest make.
Do not undertake to go trouting stintingly equipped, which is not saying that you are to dress and act like a circus clown. But you must be properly outfitted. Good carpenters make good houses, but their work is better and more pleasant if they have good tools.
The tyro who is not fortunate enough to have the friendship of a practical fisherman to whom he may apply for advice should read the works on angling and ichthyology by Izaak Walton, Henry William Herbert ("Frank Forester"), Seth Green, Charles Hallock. Wm. C. Harris, Thaddeus Norris, Genio C. Scott. Frederick Mather, Robert Roosevelt, G. Brown Goode, Kit Clarke, Dr. Jas. A. Henshall, Charles Zibeon Southard, Dr. Edward Breck, Emlyn M. Gill. George M. L. LaBranche, Louis Rhead, Eugene McCarthy, Dr. Henry van Dyke, David Starr Jordan. Dr. Evermann, Prof. Baird, Tarlton H. Bean, Richard Marston, Frederick E. Pond ("Will Wildwood"). Mary Orvis Marbury, A. Nelson Cheney, Charles F. Orvis, Dr. Charles Frederick Holder, Perry D. Frazer. Emerson Hough, Rowland E. Robinson, Isaac McLellan. Francis Endicott, Dean Sage, Wm. C. Prime. Henry P. Wells, Judge Northrup, John Harrington Keene, et al., and make a study of the catalogues of the better class of sporting-goods houses.
CHAPTER XII
TROUT FLIES, ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL
"The wide range of difference between the wet fly and the dry fly lies in the fact that the wet fly is an imitation of no special thing active and living, while the dry fly purports to be an imitation of the natural fly. It is generally a well-known fact that any of our well-known American wet flies can be converted into exceptionally good dry flies by giving them an ablution of oil."—Robert Page Lincoln, Outdoor Life. September, 1915.