Flies and Fly-fishing. 365 



slant motion, slowly cruising about some fixed locality 

 which they have selected for their spawning bed. For 

 an hour or more not a single fish may be within reach, 

 yet the next ten minutes a dozen may have approached. 

 Fishing over or near a spawning bed is worthy only of a 

 poacher, in the opinion of most anglers, but in the Range- 

 ly region, during June and September alone the large 

 fish frequent water shallow enough to subject them to 

 the temptation of the fly. But twenty days of the latter 

 month are available, and then nature has thrown about 

 them the protection of a most fickle appetite. If all the 

 large fish caught in the month of September were fairly 

 taken with bait or fly, the loss would be but trifling, 

 while the annual stream of ready money, which the often 

 delusive hope of taking a big trout brings into this re- 

 mote part of that State, otherwise so little blessed by 

 nature, is of the utmost importance to its scanty but 

 deserving population. Therefore the State of Maine 

 permits fishing till the first of October, and in so doing 

 few will question that it does wisely. 



After having been in position for half an hour or so, 

 if in a boat and moderate quiet has been preserved 

 that is, if there has been no concussion upon its sides or 

 bottom reel in short and try close to the boat, particu- 

 larly on the shady side. Here let your fly sink pretty 

 well, and draw it slowly to the surface ; for the fish 

 love the shade, and are apt to settle there. 



The foregoing is the only method by which I have 

 ever known a fish of over four pounds' weight to be 

 taken with the fly. Occasionally one may rise at and 

 take a fly on the surface, but I have never known or even 

 heard of such a case. I have heard not unfrequently of 

 such rising to the fly of an angler who habitually fished 



