“It is sometimes very hard in the case of some of the larger fires,” replied Cecil. “At times when we are about to throw up our hands in despair, a providential rain will save the day. Then, on the other hand, we may have a bad thunder storm and find as many as twenty or thirty new fires burning where trees have been struck by lightning.”
Cecil took out a pipe and lighted it. After he had the tobacco burning, Bill noticed that before throwing the match away, he broke it into two pieces.
“Why did you break that match?” asked Bill. “I noticed that it was no longer burning, and yet you seemed to be particularly careful to break it before throwing it to the ground.”
“All real woodsmen use that means of being sure that they are not dropping a spark when they think that the match is entirely extinguished. There is no doubt of the match being out by the time that you have broken it in half. That’s another thing, during certain extra dry seasons, we do not allow any smoking at all in the forests. I have bored you enough with this shop talk. May I join you in a little fishing?”
“By all means,” said Bill. “We don’t know much about it. In fact, do not know the kind of fish that we are trying to catch other than they are trout.”
“You are liable to catch steelhead, rainbow, locklaven or brook trout in the river here,” said Cecil. “What kind of flies are you using?”
“We aren’t using flies, we were using worms,” replied Bob.
“That’s no way to go trout fishing,” said Cecil. “It is not sporting. Give the fish a chance. You can get your limit with flies, so why use worms?”
“We didn’t catch any with worms,” replied Bill. “I thought that we were going to, when I fell into the river, but the big one that we had hooked broke away. We have some flies, but we did not know which to use.”
“That’s a rather hard question to decide,” remarked Cecil. “Trout are particular creatures. One can never tell at what they will strike. Some days they will strike at flies similar to those you see flying over the water. That is, if white flies are flying low over the water, use an artificial white fly. However, that rule doesn’t always hold good. I have been fishing when there were millions of live white flies all over the water and the trout would not even rise for the one on my line, but when I put a dark one on, I caught all kinds of fish.”