Quite sharp streams too will often fish well with the dry fly in the long evenings, and on one occasion it was again the Female Black Gnat which accounted for some difficult Wharfe trout that refused all wet flies, however presented. It is indeed during the evening rise that the dry fly will be found most generally useful on Northern streams.
That fickle evening rise that so many anglers impatiently wait for all day, only to return home beaten and disappointed at dark! Not that the fish do not rise, for at times the water literally boils with them, but their discrimination is truly wonderful. How many an angler on occasions during all that mad rise has never killed a fish, or not until the sun had dropped well behind the horizon and dusk was upon him. Then perhaps he has creeled four or five before the rise ceased, but has returned home dissatisfied, realizing that he had been thoroughly beaten, and that it was the failing light, and not his skill, knowledge or ingenuity, that saved him from a blank.
An autopsy will often reveal on such occasions spinners, gnats and sedge flies; and yet the most lightly and carefully made imitations, however deftly thrown, utterly fail as wet flies to attract the fish.
At times like these a Black Gnat, Ginger and Red Spinners No. 35 and No. 36, fished dry, and later, as the sun drops behind the horizon, a Silver Sedge may be recommended.
The angler should begin at the tail end of the stream and work gradually up, placing his fly over every rise and in all such places as are likely to hold feeding fish.
On occasions when all else fails, a trial may be given to a fancy fly, such as the Pink Wickham or Coachman. With such patterns during that most tantalising of rises the writers have sometimes retrieved their fortunes. Then, as dusk comes on and the dry fly becomes difficult to see, let the angler quickly change to a cast of wet flies, the flies dressed a size larger than those usually used during the day, and before the rise is over his creel may be the heavier for the change.
The dry fly has done yeoman service on some of those impossible days when fish streak away like lightning directly the cast falls on the water. By much stalking and careful fishing of out-of-the-way places and odd corners, the writers have sometimes finished with a brace or two which have given great satisfaction.
It is very comical to see the evident surprise of a fish which is taken in by a dry fly when he is quietly feeding in the shallows. Before he moves off for the stream he often seems to completely lose his head, bouncing about half in and half out of the water, and creating no end of a splash. On one occasion within the writers’ experience under such circumstances a trout landed himself high and dry on the shingle where he broke the hold, and, continuing his antics, regained the water. Long ere this he must have made room for his descendants, as agile, let it be hoped, as himself.
How inordinately fond trout must be of the “fisherman’s curse”—a term which covers, no doubt, several varieties of fly—for it will be found to have occurred in the trout’s menu with unfailing regularity throughout the summer and autumn. It almost always is the fly which the trout pick off the surface of the water when they rise in the quiet flats the livelong day, days which, most anglers will agree, are usually the most difficult. Sometimes something may be done with Ginger or Red Spinners, wet or dry, under such conditions, when imitations of the “curses,” probably on account of their size, fail to attract.