Fly-FisHing for Trout 43 



Any Angler can take even less than one quarter of 

 the enumerated list and catch fully as many brook 

 trout as one who might use all of the flies mentioned- 

 if he can pick out the ones the trout are rising to with- 

 out trying them all until he discovers the killing ones. 

 A chef might please his master with one or two of the 

 forty courses billed, if he knew what the man wanted. 



Sometimes an Angler can judge the appropriate fly 

 to use by observing nature in seeing trout rise to the 

 live fly; but, there are times when trout are not rising, 

 times when they are tired of the fly upon the water, and 

 times when the real fly is not on the wing. Then the 

 Angler is expected to take matters in his own hands 

 and whip about quietly until he discovers the proper 

 patterns. It is better to try for the right flies with a 

 list of twenty-nine than whip over a list of a thousand 

 or more. I have learned from experience that trout, 

 like human beings, are in love with a variety of foods 

 at different times. Their tastes change with the 

 months, the weeks, the days, the hours, and, under 

 certain conditions which I will presently explain, the 

 minutes. 



"... fish will not bite constantly, nor every day. 

 They have peculiar, unexplainable moods that con- 

 tinuing favoring conditions of water, wind, and 

 weather cannot control" (Eugene McCarthy, Fa- 

 miliar Fish). 



When I mention twenty-nine different patterns as 

 being seasonable at a stated period, I do not mean to 

 say that the trout will rise to them all and at any time 

 and under all conditions. In the first place, the person 

 using them might be a tyro unfamiliar with the gentle 

 art, the streams might be dried up, there might be an 

 earthquake, the flies might be too large, too coarse, 



