FOREST, LAKE, AND RIVER 



of a stone ; they will take the fly under water or 

 on the surface with equal eagerness ; but these 

 times are exceptional, and such fishing is not sport, 

 not real pleasure. 



Taking fishing the season through, day in and 

 day out, skill in the use of the rod and a fine 

 sense of judgment must be exercised. Personally 

 I am a great lover of the brown and gray hackles. 

 Not the palmer, but the brown hackle with a 

 green silk body wound with gold, and the gray 

 hackle with a gray silk body wound with silver. 

 I am insistent upon these little, and what some 

 may consider unimportant, details. I have experi- 

 mented extensively, and have no use for the hackles 

 with peacock bodies, and, generally speaking, I care 

 little for the palmers, though at times they are 

 good killers. 



Here is an incident : On one occasion in partic- 

 ular I was fishing with a Parmachenee belle and 

 a brown hackle of the kind mentioned. It was the 

 only fly of the kind I had in my book, and when 

 after a time I lost it, I put a peacock-bodied 

 hackle in its place. Up to that time I had been 

 taking a trout on the hackle at every second 

 or third cast. With the appearance of the new 

 fly, the trout stopped rising, except occasionally to 

 the Parmachenee. I tried other flies in the book 



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