WET FLY FISHING, ETC. 127 



DRY FLY FISHING WITH THREE FLIES 

 Now we will suppose you have just arrived for the 

 first time at a stream for a few days' fishing. It is an 

 ordinary trout brook, and you may not have any one with 

 you to suggest the correct fly with which to fish. 



Your Field or Fishing Gazette may have told you that 

 Black Gnat, the Blue Quill, and Olive Quill are being 

 taken on the water. But there are no flies visible, and the 

 trout are not rising. How, then, are you going to determine 

 the correct fly to use ? It is by no means a bad plan 

 although not usually adopted in order to save time, to 

 place one of these flies, say the Olive Quill, on the end of 

 your cast ; then, three feet up the cast, with a very short 

 end, attach the Blue Quill, and again, three feet further up, 

 a Black Gnat. Oil the cast and each fly, and treat this cast 

 of three flies as you would a single dry fly cast, and fish up- 

 stream. I have often, by adopting this method and fishing 

 the likely spots, discovered a fly which the fish will take, 

 and by discarding the other two and fishing dry fly with the 

 remaining one, have saved much time and caught fish which 

 I should not otherwise have taken. 



Even when the fish are rising, it is often difficult to find 

 out the definite fly which they are taking, and when, for 

 experimental purposes, you may, as above advised, be 

 fishing with three dry flies and happen to catch a rising fish, 

 examine the food in the upper part of its gullet. This can 

 be done by a gentle upward pressure along the body towards 

 the gills, which will express the latest taken food into 

 the mouth. The chances are that the sub-imago form of 

 some water insect will be found there, as well as the pupae 

 of the same insect, and if the fly on which you have taken 

 this fish does not secure you trout when it is fished as a 

 single dry fly, try a specimen of the sub-imago found in the 

 fish's gullet. 



