Charles Hallock, author of The Sportsman's Gazetteer, The Salmon Fisher, etc.: "I have nothing more to say. I hung up my trout rod last summer at Chesterfield. Mass., in my eighty-second year. So, my fly-book is closed. Let younger Anglers do the talking and discuss ad infinitum. Flies are not on my line. Good-bye."

"To frame the little animal
Let nature guide thee."
—Gay.

TROUT TAKING THE FLY

"You will observe when casting the wet fly ... that trout seldom rise to the fly when it first strikes the water ... after years of experience I am prepared to state as my opinion that such a thing does not happen once in thirty casts."—Charles Zibeon Southard, Trout Fly-Fishing in America.

This has not been my experience with fontinalis in the streams and ponds of Long Island, N. Y., and the mountain brooks of Pennsylvania, where many of my trout took the fly almost before it touched the water. I have seen trout catch large live flies in the air a few inches over the surface. I think large trout in clear, still ponds easily see the cast fly before it alights. The trout in rapid streams may not be so alert, but I have certainly caught many a specimen on the fly the instant the lure touched the water.

Mr. William M. Carey, who is responsible for the frontispiece in this volume, is positive trout often jump out of the water in taking the fly. I, too, have seen trout do so. It is not a regular practice of the species, but I easily recall many instances of the trout leaping clear of the surface and taking the fly in the descent. Trout of all sizes will often strike both living and artificial flies with their tails, this either in play or to disable the insect. A writer in Forest and Stream (January 9, 1901) says: "In fishing a trout stream in northern Michigan I was using a cast of a Parmachenee belle and a brown hackle. I was wading downstream, and I came to a place where a tree had fallen into the stream, and after several casts I noticed some small trout following my flies. I cast again, and while my flies were five or six inches from the water a trout four or five inches long jumped clear out of the water, grabbed my Parmachenee belle and immediately dove with it in its mouth. I believe the same trout did the same thing several times while I was fishing there. These were brook trout and they were not jumping except when they jumped at my flies."

The foregoing comments were submitted to Mr. Southard, and he writes me:

"What you say about catching trout in Long Island waters and the mountain brooks of Pennsylvania is entirely true. During the early spring season I have caught, at times, many small trout on such waters in precisely the same way, and in addition there have been days on many different waters where occasionally during the whole of the open season I have caught trout when they rose the moment the fly alighted upon the water. These experiences of ours alone, however, do not establish as a fact nor as a general proposition that trout rise to a fly more often when it first alights upon the water than after the fly has been fished or played by the Angler; nor that my statement as a general proposition is not a correct one.

"The statement was perhaps poorly worded and thus misleading, and I should have said that on an average trout do not rise to a fly once in thirty casts when it first alights upon the water. My opinion was based, first, upon trout fly-fishing on all kinds of fishable waters wherever found; second, upon all sizes of trout from the minimum of six inches to the maximum of thirty inches whether or not they were indigenous or planted fish; third, upon my own experience of over twenty-five years as well as the opinion of many Anglers and guides with an experience covering a longer period than my own; fourth, upon my knowledge of the habits and habitats of trout under the many varying conditions which govern their lives and actions.

"Unfortunately most Anglers have given almost no thought to studying and analyzing 'the art of fly-fishing' to the end that they may become better and more successful fishermen and thus enjoy to a greater extent the pleasures of the clean, dignified, and delightful sport of angling. It is not surprising then that an Angler upon first thought, even an experienced one, might think that trout rise to flies when they first alight upon the water more often than once in thirty casts because he remembers only the rises and his successes, but pays very little attention to the lack of either. How many Anglers know approximately the number of casts they make in an hour? How many know the number of rises they have and when? How many know the number of trout that rise and strike and are hooked and landed? The answer is 'Few indeed'; and those who hazard a guess are usually far from the facts.