STREAMCRAFT 



for weeks. It does not look like any insect in 

 the world, and the ruder and coarser the fly 

 the more successful it seemed. 



He ties it on hooks much larger than the size 

 appropriate for the ordinary artificials in a 

 given locality, and the color does not seem to 

 make much difference. Sometimes he makes 

 the body of the deer hair, with "wings" fashioned 

 by bending the hair back at the neck. Again 

 the body and wings are made separately. He 

 rather favors a body of the white hair with 

 wings of mixed gray and white or brown and 

 white. Or the body may be of herl; but he 

 thinks the fly of all deer hair is better. There 

 is no hackle "except by accident," and the 

 wings are never set upright but are kept low. 

 The important point about the wings is not to 

 crop the crinkly ends of the hair; deer hair does 

 not mat down in the water but spreads out, and 

 it is this life-like crawl of the long hairs as they 

 move through the water that constitutes the 

 deadliest quality of the bucktail-fly. This fly 

 is most effective when "pulled up or across 

 stream in a series of short jerks, a foot or more 

 at once, then letting it drop back just a little." 



A more or less complete assortment of these 

 fly-tying materials is kept in stock by the larger 

 tackle-houses. 6 But it is no little fun to collect 



6 We have obtained materials from C. H. Shoff, 405 Saar Street, Kent, 

 Wash., and from the Mole Fly Company, Roosevelt, N. Y. 



172 



