THE BASSES: FRES H-W ATER AND MARINE 



by so long as the fish were rising, but no longer. 

 At such times he had a dry way of announcing 

 his belief that one fly was as good as another - 

 when the fish had stopped biting. His cast was 

 made as follows: hand-fly, coachman; dropper, 

 black palmer; point or tail fly, big Injun. 



In this connection it is opportune to state that 

 the club decided at one of its earliest camp-fire 

 talks to adopt the above mode of designating the 

 flies attached to the leader, what is generally 

 known as a " cast of flies." They were compelled 

 to have a uniform nomenclature, as much confu- 

 sion had been created, even among themselves, by 

 the terms " first dropper " and " second dropper," 

 which many anglers use indiscriminately to desig- 

 nate alternately the middle fly and the one nearest 

 the rod-tip. 



" Heaven knows," said the Doctor one evening, 

 when the subject was talked over, " there 's enough 

 confusion already existing about field and water 

 sports: such as conflicting fish- and game-laws 

 and the almost hourly changes, by zoologists, - 

 particularly ichthyologists, of the specific names 

 of game-fish and game-birds. Take the very fish 

 we are going after the black bass : we find that 

 within the last five years he has been a gristies, a 

 Micropterus, a salmoides, a pallidus, a dolomiei, 

 and heaven knows what! Do let us try, boys, to 

 get at what we are talking about, so that we can 



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