For this time of year your flies should be March browns and blue uprights, and need not be tied on very fine gut. The outfit that is required then need cost but a few shillings, but if you can spare more get a small fishing-basket, and a fly-book, with a stock of flies. Thus equipped and with good boots you may fish for weeks without needing to visit a shop.
In order to learn how to throw a fly you should persuade a friend to show you the way he does it. This need not be at the river, nor need you tax your friend’s time to any great extent. After you have once learnt the knack practice only is required to enable you to throw a fly fairly, though it may be years before you can do so well.
This preliminary trial (during which you will have wound the line round your neck a few times) being over, you can go with some confidence to the stream. Arrived at the bank, don’t peer over to see whether there are any trout, because if you do there won’t be any—at least, not after you have shown yourself.
If convenient, make for a point some distance down-stream, and work upwards. By this plan you will have a chance of circumventing the trout, even if the water be clear, and not rough. In rough or coloured water these tactics are not necessary, and, in fact, it is as well, because much easier, to fish down-stream under such circumstances.
Let us take first the case of clear water, not very rough. Keep back from the edge and stoop a little, taking advantage of any cover, even the stump of a thistle. Watch for a rise, and, if possible, throw your fly lightly a little above it, and let it float down over the fish. Should the fish be extra silly he may take your fly, and then you must strike, as in bait-fishing, but with less force.
If you are fishing a northern stream, or a Devon or Cornwall brook, you will find it worth while to go on casting even if you see no rises; but on Hampshire, or other slow running rivers, the usual plan is to wait for a rise. But this style of fishing, though practised with some success by the lucky fellows who are in Winchester School, is not altogether suited for the restless nature of a boy.
To return to the fish which has taken your fly. Being a little one (for nothing large would be so silly), he will give you little trouble to land. Take care, though, to guide him down-stream; which, being below him, you can easily do. Lift him out as quietly as you can, and lose no time in getting your flies on the water once more. I say flies, because you will find it best to use two in ordinary fly-fishing.
The upper fly, or “bob,” as it is called, should be two feet or more from the tail, and should only have about three inches of gut attached to it, so that it may stick out nearly at right angles with the line. It should be fastened to a knot in the gut, so that it may not slip up and down.
There are several ways of fastening it on, but they cannot be fully explained without diagrams, and a boy of any ingenuity can easily find out for himself.
The plan most commonly adopted, that of looping it on, though it is not so neat as a knot, has the advantage of permitting the fly to be changed easily—a great point when the trout are fickle.