Fishing with Floating Flies

by Samuel G. Camp

The open season is a long one, extending, taking an average, from early in the spring, about the first of March, to the first of October; and as a consequence of the steady and hard fishing the trout naturally become very shy and sophisticated. Owing to the placidity of the streams the rise of a trout is not difficult to detect, and it seems to pay best to cast to a single trout actually known to be on the rise and feeding rather than to fish all the water on the principle of chuck-and-chance-it.

On the other hand, the American fly-caster largely enjoys his sport upon the trout streams of the woods or wilderness; erratic rivers with current alternating between swift and slow, broken water and smooth, rapid and waterfall, deep pool and shallow riffle. While insect life is not, of course, absent, one can actually follow such a stream for days without observing the rise of a feeding trout, although, as noted above, sometimes a rising fish will, of course, be seen; but seldom will a sufficient number be observed to warrant the angler's relying exclusively upon casting to the rise.

That, indeed, upon the average trout stream of this country, the well-chosen and cleverly cast floating fly has its place has been amply proved by the experience of many anglers. Upon the typical wilderness trout stream, where the fish are both very abundant and totally uneducated, dry fly fishing would be in the nature of a farce—although doubtless successful in view of the fact that the wild trout of such a stream will rise to almost anything chucked almost anyhow. But the average American trout stream may now be classed as a civilized stream, and it is upon such waters that the dry fly has proved its worth by succeeding time and again, under certain conditions, when the wet fly has failed.

The conditions under which the balance of probable success is on the side of the dry fly and against the wet will be more particularly detailed in succeeding chapters; in general, it may be said that the angler who fishes largely upon hard-fished public streams—and that means the great majority of fly-fishermen—where much whipping and wading of the stream by all sorts and conditions of fishermen, good, bad, and indifferent, have rendered the trout wise in their generation, cannot well afford to overlook the possibilities of the floating fly. In such streams the trout only upon rare occasions are afforded the opportunity of seeing a single artificial fly, singularly lifelike in appearance, cocked and floating in a natural way upon the surface—and they will rise to such a fly, if cleverly placed on the water in such a manner as not to arouse suspicion, when a drag of two or more wet flies would only serve to set them down still more obstinately.

Parenthetically, in this connection, in view of the fact that fishing with the dry fly is beyond doubt a very successful method of taking trout when or where other methods may have failed, it should be obvious—to put the matter on a strictly practical basis—that the assumption of an "holier than thou" relation by the dry fly enthusiast toward his brother of the wet fly, on the ground that dry fly fishing is more sportsmanlike, is, to say the least, somewhat illogical. Surely there is little virtue in the resort to and employment of an angling method of proved deadliness under conditions which at the time render the sunken fly harmless—however, we are not here concerned with the ethics of the matter.

But dry fly casting does, indeed, call for a high degree of skill on the part of the angler, both in casting and fishing the fly; additionally, it is imperative that one should be familiar with the best there is in fishing tackle and know much about the habits of the trout and of stream-life in general. In a word, the customary rough-and-ready equipment of the average desultory fly-caster will not do—nor will the ordinary unrefined and casual methods of the average wet fly fisherman.

To succeed with the dry fly, the wet fly fisherman of average skill must study to become still more proficient; the veritable novice at fly fishing for trout should, it would seem, first become fairly adept with the wet fly before going on to the finer-drawn art of dry fly casting. Therefore successful dry fly fishing, as done in America, is predicated upon a thorough knowledge of the craft of the wet fly fisher.

The beginner at fly-fishing must strive to become a first-rate fly-caster—to cast a light and accurate fly, not necessarily a long line. He must study fishing tackle in order to know the tools best suited to the sport under normal conditions, and also under the conditions as he finds them. He must familiarize himself by much actual stream experience with the habits of the trout—learn to read a trout stream as another man might read a book. Moreover, he should cultivate the power of observation and apply it constantly to stream-life in general and the insect life of the stream in particular.

The correct fundamental theory of fly-fishing for trout, with either wet or dry flies, consists in the closest possible simulation, by means of an artificial fly, of the form, coloration, and action of some natural insect then upon the water and upon which the trout are feeding. In England this theory has always been very closely followed by expert fly-fishermen, although over there, as in this country, various fancy flies—not dressed to counterfeit any certain natural fly—have long been in successful use. In England it is the custom of many good fly-fishers who are also skillful fly-tiers, to take with them to the stream a small kit of fly dressing materials and to tie at the stream-side correct imitations of the natural flies then upon the water.

The American fly-fisherman, speaking of the class generally, has never followed the theory of exact imitation of nature in the selection of his trout flies. The larger part of our so-called American trout fly patterns are actually of English origin, and were introduced to the waters of this country through the medium of our first professional fly-tiers, Englishmen and Scotchmen, who, as a matter of course, after coming to this country, continued to dress the patterns with which they were familiar. A certain few of our most famous artificial flies are, indeed, of American invention—flies such as the Seth Green, Reuben Wood, Parmachenee Belle, Imbrie, Barrington, and a few others. Other patterns, so familiar to the fly-fishermen of this country that the fact that they are not of American origin seems very strange, are the coachman, grizzly king, Montreal (Canadian), Cahill, governor, cowdung, silver doctor, Beaverkill—in fact, nearly all of our most killing and widely known patterns.