70 * * * * * "OA, Ranger!" 



they will not rise to a fly. Trolling becomes necessary in order to get 

 them. Spawning fish, especially females, will fight a spinner, and at the 

 spawning time of the year the spinner will furnish a lot of fun to the 

 person who does not realize that every time he catches a spawning 

 female he destroys an important potential factor in the maintenance of 

 good fishing in that water. 



Most of the rangers are fly fishermen and they consider the use of 

 the fly the best sport there is in the national parks or elsewhere. Every 

 body who aspires to be a fisherman should learn to cast. It takes time 

 and patience to learn, but it is a fascinating pastime. He who once gets 

 into the spirit of it will stand and cast for hours without trying to get a 

 fish, just as a golfer will spend all day knocking his little ball around, 

 practicing the fine points of the game. The use of flies, of course, de 

 pends on what the fish will bite. The best thing to do upon arriving at a 

 new lake or stream is to watch the water and see what the fish are 

 jumping for, if they are jumping at all. If the trout are after a dark 

 insect, use a black gnat or brown hackle or some other dark fly. If 

 moths are flying, use bigger flies of the same color as the prevailing 

 moth or other large insect. The most popular light flies in the national 

 parks are the Queen of the Waters and the Royal Coachman. But one 

 should have a fairly good variety of flies, both large and small, light, 

 dark, and medium, and keep them in a fly book and not around the hat 

 band although a few flies in the hatband do give the impression that 

 one is really goin' fishin'. 



The rangers try to tell visitors where to go to fish and what to use 

 in the way of a lure, but whether or not one is successful will depend 

 upon skill, in the first place, and the number of fishermen who have 

 been there before, in the second place. By August, in many of the 

 parks, the fish have become pretty sophisticated and wary, especially 

 along the roads, and no lure will fool them, unless in the hands of an 

 Old-Timer who has learned how to fool them under any and all circum 

 stances. It has been said in some parks that toward the end of the season 

 along the roads the only lure that will attract a trout is a club sandwich, 

 and even then the fish insist that only chicken and fresh tomatoes be 

 used in the sandwich. 



After the trout have been caught, they should be carefully cleaned, 

 and the fisherman should do this himself. The real angler never takes 

 the fish to camp for the women folks to clean. A good fisherman can 

 clean a fish in less time than it takes to tell about it, and he ought to do 

 it as part of the day's work. As a matter of fact, it will be the only 

 work of the day, since everything else is great fun. Most Sagebrushers 

 like to fry their fish over the open fire and that is the best way to cook 

 them, according to the notion of rangers and other mountain men. Fry 



