FISHING 
it were, taking the fly in the mouth in a manner 
indicating a duty rather than a physical necessity, 
closing its jaws slowly upon the feathers and then 
quietly turning tail and returning to its lair below. 
Now, such fish are a glory to the “slow striker’’; 
he will creel every one of them that rises to his 
flies. But, then and again, taking the same 
stream, just above this quiet pool, where a strong 
rapid is boiling and foaming over the rocks in mid- 
stream, and “the slow striker” is all afield. A 
quick eye with the nerves all aglow, an instantan- 
eous turn of the wrist when the slightest swirl in 
the water is seen, or the faintest pluck at the 
feathers is felt, are the only assurances of a success- 
ful outing. 
Much discussion arose, some years ago, as to 
the trout flopping its tail at a floating bug, in its 
efforts to disable or drown it and thus render its 
prey more easy to capture. In rapid or turbulent 
waters this never occurs; in a large quiet one it 
has been my good fortune to witness it nearly 
every day for about a fortnight. This delightful 
experience was awarded me on the Ontonagon 
River, some fifteen miles from Watersmeet, Mich. 
The trout, averaging about half a pound each, 
lived in a pool with but little current, nearly 300 
feet in length and fifty in breadth, the banks of 
which were densely grown with large alders, the 
branches overhanging some 6 or 8 feet on each 
side of the pool. The trout seemed to be loitering 
expectant under the shadows of the alders for 
falling insects, which now and then would drop 
into the water. There was no rush, no flash in the 
pool of a velvet-robed, red-dotted arrow, but a 
sluggish coming to the surface of a somber fin with 
a sort of aristocratic leisure, self-satisfied and con- 
fident of success, but a seeming indifference as to 
the result. It) would open its relatively ponderous 
jaws, gulp down the insect, and leisurely turn tail 
for the bottom. At least one out of every five of 
these trout, as if more lazy or less hungry than its 
congeners of the pool, would rise nearly to the 
surface and flop its‘tail over the floating bug, 
seldom if ever missing its aim, and so far as I could 
see, the insect being under water, secured its prey 
at every sweep of the caudal fin. I noted that the 
fish with this habit were always, seemingly, the 
largest trout in the swim, hence their sluggish, 
lazy way of “‘taking things as they come.” 
Since the days of old Juliana Benners of 1486, 
who wrote the first printed book on fishing, writers 
on angling have described the trout as a leaping 
fish when on the hook, with acrobatic efforts to 
free themselves from it. No angling outing could 
be described or a monograph written on this fish 
without an allusion to his rapid, aerial, and oft- 
times successful gyrations to escape. In a trout- 
angling experience of about half a century but 
one instance of a trout, when hooked, leaping into 
the air, on a slack line, has occurred to me. True, 
this fish, when tightly held, will come to the 
surface, with its head and part of its body out of 
the water, and sometimes with the entire body at 
length on the surface as it fights frantically to 
escape, but the angler’s rod held tightly and up- 
ward causes this; given a slack line and the trout 
will surge deep. On the one occasion when the 
471 
exception above noted occurred, the trout was 
struck in the middle of a small pool, and a boulder 
protruded its head from the surface on the left 
side about six inches with a breadth of two feet. 
Holding tightly, the fish surged deep to the left, 
and when within a foot of the rock, and unable to 
go around its lower side because of the strain of 
the line, and fearing still more its human enemy 
in front, the fish suddenly leaped into the air on a 
slack line, and over the top of the boulder, but 
this unusual strategic action did not gave him; in 
a few minutes he was in my creel. 
And as for horsehair snells and leaders, we 
shall also quote a. pleasantly remembered 
angling writer of other days, Gen. John Mc- 
Nulta. In an article published in his ‘Fifty 
Years with a Fly,” and telling of trout-fishing 
on Long Island when he was a lad, in the 
early ’4os, this writer said: 
The tackle then used, except rod, reel, line and 
hooks, was always home-made. Leaders and 
snells were made of horsehair—one hair to the 
snell—two for a distance, then three, and for the 
upper foot or foot and a half of the leader to the 
connection with the reel line, four horse hairs, to 
make the necessary taper. ‘The snells of a single 
hair on the tail fly being from 12 to 15 inches, the 
dropper from 8 to 12 inches long, the leader from 
5 to 7 feet long, the rod always light and whippy, 
114 to 124 feet long, weighing 7 to 8 ounces; but 
if the extra length was cut off the butt to bring it 
down to 84 to 94 feet, as generally used now, it 
would make a rod much like our modern 5% to 
6-ounce rods. The rods were often home-made, 
and every angler made his own flies from imported 
patterns sacredly kept solely for that purpose; 
except in the direst emergency, or in great stress 
under strong temptation to overcome the cunning 
of some particularly sagacious fish. To an expert 
angler no better description of the character and 
qualities of the rod can be given than that with a 
single horsehair the heaviest trout, when fairly 
hooked, were securely held, albeit let me call 
attention to the fact that there is a vast difference in 
the quality of horsehairs, and nice discrimination 
with considerable trouble was required to get the 
right shade of coloring to harmonize with the 
water, generally light, but not white, sometimes, 
however, a jet black. Artificial color could not be 
resorted to without injury to the hair and making 
the snell worthless. I am sure that any expert will 
find it an interesting experiment to try a single 
horsehair sne]l 12 to 18 inches long, a tailer on a 
fly tied on a 12 or 14 hook at the end of a very 
fine tapered 6-foot gut leader and a light tapered 
line and a very whippy rod; looping always, making 
no knots anywhere to touch the water. Whipping. 
the water with a bulky knotted line or leader will 
have about the same effect as throwing in pebbles, 
except that occasionally some stupid fish mistakes 
the knot when lightly cast for a falling insect, and 
goes for it instead of the fly. 
Then, as now, the anglers, young and old, were 
ambitious to visit the far-away streams and camp 
in the primeval forest. 
