452 MANUAL FOB YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



allow of its being tried when they are used. The young 

 angler should practise both methods, and should never 

 consider that he has mastered the first great difficulty, 

 until he has acquired the power of dropping his fly upon 

 the water tolerably near a given spot by both the above 

 methods, and without its being preceded by any portion of 

 the line, or followed by more than a few inches of it. As 

 soon as he has thus dropped his fly he begins to draw it 

 more or less directly to him, and with a series of jerks, 

 varying a good deal according to the fly and the fish to be 

 taken. In whipping for small fry, very little more need be 

 done than to bring the fly gently and steadily towards the 

 bank, and then repeat the cast in a fresh direction. When 

 hooked, they may be landed at once, even with a single 

 hair-line. Dipping may be practised with the small fry, 

 using the natural house-fly, or in fact any small fly ; but it 

 requires very little art, and I shall therefore postpone the 

 description of this species of fishing until the paragraph 

 treating of Chub-fishing. 



Almost every species of fish, at some time or other, 

 rises to fly in clear river waters ; but the sea-trout is the 

 only one which is ever known to take it in the open sea. 

 This fish, however, affords great sport in the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence, even out of sight of land, with a large scarlet 

 ibis fly, in a mackerel breeze. The pickerel, the bass, 

 sometimes the perch, the smelt, and even the shad will rise 

 to the fly, and all the small fry in the pools will take a 

 midge on the smallest sized hook. Indeed, there is no 

 prettier practice for a young hand, than whipping for smelt 

 with the red fly, in large clear rivers. 



