30 The American Angler 
Walton, the prospects for fishing interested me 
not. a little. 
Arriving in the dead of winter, I was given 
a grand opportunity of controlling my impa- 
tience (at which I am not a success) until the 
fishing season opened, which is generally 
about the first of May. So I had to satisfy 
myself with the barber shop yarns and remi- 
niscences furnished by the oldest inhabitants 
and genuine good fellows, of which no city can 
boast of more than the one above named. 
I had never seen any fly fishing, and as this 
was the only method of fishing for black bass 
recognized in this locality, I made up my mind 
to become a student of the art, as they termed 
it, a title which I soon found was well chosen, 
and the only proper name for a sport of which 
I have since become an ardent and enthusiastic 
follower. So I listened earnestly to the talk 
of ‘“‘how I caught that three pounder in the 
big rifles,” and how ‘‘I took nineteen of as 
fine bass as you ever saw in one afternoon,” 
and heard why they used larger flies on a 
cloudy day and smaller ones on a clear day, 
with the general discussion over the merits of 
the professor, red ibis, brown hackle, grizzly 
king, etc., as killers, and the best make of 
leaders, Split bamboo, eight-ounce rods, etc., 
all of which was Greek to me, and so the time 
passed and the ice left the river. 
As I had always considered myself a bass 
fisherman, using chubs or shiners for bait, and 
owned the usual first-class outfit for taking the 
gamest fish in the world, not barring even the 
fish of histrionic fame—the trout—I naturally 
felt piqued at being handicapped by beginning, 
as I must needs do, at the bottom again. But 
with ‘‘one of the finest’”’ I drove eight miles 
down the river, having, in the meantime, se- 
cured a fly rod and the necessary water tackle, 
a éaold timer, and was shown the modus oper- 
and/as practiced by the fly fisherman resident. 
My outfit consisted of a split bamboo rod, a 
click reel, forty yards of braided linen line of 
the regulation size, a six foot single gut leader, 
with a yellow professor as tail fly, and an ordi- 
nary brown hackle as ‘‘trimmer,”’ and a pair 
of light wading boots. 
The river at this point was broken by rocks 
into numberless riffles, and the bass lay in the 
deep shaded pools below. 
I was duly initiated by my companion into 
the mysteries of the back cast, whipping, draw- 
ing, signs, and several other Grecian accom- 
plishments. Soon my companion hooked and 
killed a small bass, and I became much inter- 
ested in his handling of this fish, as] saw an 
opportunity of learning something new. And 
I can honestly say that, when a few moments 
later I had the good luck to geta ‘strike” 
and succeeded in landing, though not in quite 
au fait style, a bass weighing possibly a pound 
and a half, that I was ‘‘heap proud” of my 
first fish with a fly, and that I was more de- 
termined than ever to master the fine points of 
the sport. 
We kept on down the river for perhaps half a 
mile, getting no more rises, and concluded to 
go back around the riffles and try the fish as 
they worked up in the shallows, as they inva- 
riably do just before night. Here we had some 
fine sport, taking probably twenty bass with the 
two rods before darkness called a halt. 
By dint of perserverance, and the replacing 
of more than one broken tip during the sum- 
mer that followed, I became fairly adept, 
though with much to learn, and I began the 
next fishing season with renewed interest in 
this grand sport. Ihave since used my flies 
in all kinds of streams and lakes where black 
bass are found, and have yet to see a place 
where the flies would not discount the minnow, 
but I shall always have a tender regard for the 
crystal waters of the beautiful Fox, where I 
threw my first fly. During the five years of 
my stay in this country of magnificent dis- 
tances, I have many times taken my rod and 
flies out of their cases and sadly replaced them, 
as the black bass is not a resident of South 
Dakota, a state which, in my estimation, lacks 
nothing else to make it asportsmen’s paradise. 
PIERRE, South Dakota. Camp FIRE. 
CASAS SAS 
