268 FISHING WITH THE FLY. 



season, I put my rods where they will not be injured by 

 the modern furnace heat, each joint of each rod placed 

 flat on a shelf. But the tackle trunk, securely locked 

 that no vandal hand may get to its treasures, is where 

 my eye rests upon it daily, and my fly books are in one 

 of the drawers of my writing desk where I can easily 

 reach them. When I take one of the books out of an 

 evening, or at any time during my waking hours in 

 early winter, I generally seek out some tattered fly that 

 is wrapped carefully in a paper and placed in one of its 

 pockets. The book may be full of flies, sombre or 

 gorgeous in all the freshness of untried silk, mohair, 

 feathers and tinsel ; but take for instance this one with 

 the legend written on its wrapper : 



"Puffer Pond, June, 1867.— Thirty-five pounds of 

 trout in two hours. The last of the gentlemen that did 

 the deed." 



This, to me, tells the story of a very pleasant week 

 spent in the Adirondacks. I remember, as I hold the 

 ragged, faded fly in my hand and see that it still retains 

 something of the dark blue of its mohair body and the 

 sheen of its cock-feather wings, that it was one of six 

 flies that I had in my fly-book that June day that 

 stands out from other June days, in my memory, like a 

 Titan amongst pygmies. The fly had no name, but the 

 trout liked it for all that, and rose to it with as much 

 avidity as though they had been properly introduced to 

 some real bug of which this was an excellent counterfeit. 



That glorious two hours' time — with its excitement of 



