FLY-FISHING FOR GREAT PIKE 



cidedly not recommended by the writer as a regular 

 lure. The factory-built buck-tails, especially the white 

 tabbed with red, are very good, though I do not see 

 the necessity for the treble hooks ordinarily employed. 

 I prefer a single hook. I have seldom experienced any 

 difficulty in hooking a fish, once I have gotten him to 

 rise. The hooking is a matter for the angler's wrist, 

 as in all fly-fishing. If the angler has had any experi- 

 ence in building flies, is never so great a tyro, only 

 knows how "to stick the feathers together," he should 

 tie his own fuzzy wuzzies. The more flamboyant and 

 outlandish the creation, the more attractive it will 

 prove. Let red figure in every fly, is one of my cheer- 

 fully obeyed rules. I made one once out of black 

 feathers, a large scraggly fly, with a streaming red 

 tail, which in a certain northern river proved very 

 attractive on bright days. As a rule, the fly will prove 

 sufficiently weighty, once it is wet, to sink beneath 

 the surface, and I have never found "floating flies" 

 very successful for great pike. The fly should sink 

 six or eight inches beneath the surface. If the fly is 

 unusually light, one could weight with a wrapping of 

 tinfoil or lead, but do not render the fly so heavy as 

 to make the casting comparable to lure handling. 

 Bear in mind that you are fly-fishing and deport your- 

 self as a fly-fisher. 



I am convinced that in fly-fishing for great pike the 

 time of the day is not so much a matter of vital im- 

 portance as in other handling of the feathery lures. 

 I have found great pike rising at midday with avidity, 

 and again I have discovered that they would not look 

 at my most temptingly offered lures at midday, in the 

 evening, or early morning. I think there is no more 

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