In regard to flies—I have found the brighter the day, as a general thing, the darker fly do trout want. At early dawn, or in the soft twilight of evening, a very light fly—a Coachman, is best. Next, Gray Miller, and especially the Stone fly. I use more Coachmen, Black Gnats and Stone flies in one season, than I do of all other flies put together in three summers.
Be sure, of all things, that your line runs easy through the standing guides, or guide-rings. I like the former best.
In casting right or left, to reach under bushy or over-hanging limbs, the same sharp, or quick action which makes an over-cast successful, is required, and great care not to draw any slack line when your fly drops where you want it.
Many fly-fishermen are considered adepts according to the length rather than the grace and certainty of their casts. I do not think in actual stream fishing an average of a day’s casting, would reach over fifteen feet to a cast. I never made but one very long cast in actual angling in my life.
Once, on the bank of a mill-pond in the upper part of Alder Brook, in Ulster County, N. Y., I saw a trout in shoal water, the largest I ever caught in that vicinity. To reach him without alarm, I cast seventy-two feet, measured afterward from a knot on my line near my reel, and got my fish.
He weighed two and a quarter pounds, and I had to play him some to save him.
And now, with a word to young fishermen and old beginners, I will close.
Learn first to cast a line and take a trout with bait before you try a fly. You will thereby gain confidence, learn to hook your fish at the instant he strikes, and gain the supple use of arm and wrist which makes the fly-fisherman skillful.
My dear wife, by whose sick bed I pen these words, for one long joyous summer in camp, fished by my side, using bait while she saw me casting no lure but flies.
The next time we went on the stream she had a six-ounce fly-rod, and fifty beautiful trout in two hours to her basket proved how apt a pupil she had been.