April, 1922 
FOREST AND STREAM 
157 
DOWN - STREAM DRY-FLY FISHING 
THE ACCEPTED ENGLISH METHOD OF UP-STREAM DRY-FLY 
FISHING IS NOT ADAPTABLE TO OUR ROUGHER WATERS 
By LOUIS RHEAD 
4- 
STRE/^M FL0W 
I T is the object of these papers to lay 
before American anglers many new 
theories of proved merit in the higher 
art of trout - fishing, the result of 
several years’ ardent study in efforts to 
discover better methods, and try to show 
those anglers who fish for pleasure in 
the game that they have allowed them- 
selves to be led 
astray along various 
minor paths of our 
craft from logical 
methods rightly 
suited to our native 
trout waters, East 
and West. This 
condition has been 
caused by a too- 
ready, blind follow- 
ing of the theories 
expounded by 
learned men, like 
Halford and other 
British writers. 
Afterwards several 
American writers 
slavishly copied . 
their valuable ideas — forgetting, mean- 
while, those very ideas were studied and 
developed to suit entirely different cli- 
matic conditions, — for rivers exclusively 
British in character, and the insects that 
breed therein. 
It is impossible for the writer to 
underestimate or depreciate the value 
of the scientific ad- 
vance in the higher 
art of fly - fishing- 
made by British 
writers — for he 
frankly admits hav- 
ing profited greatly, 
has absorbed, indeed 
f o u n d e d his own 
careful studies upon 
their work, for the 
sole object of chang- 
ing them to suit 
American condi- 
tions, waters and 
insects. This last 
season I met quite 
an unusual number 
of expert anglers 
that came to fish in 
the waters I have 
favored for many 
years, and the 
peculiar thing I observed — they all fished 
up-stream, while I fished down-stream. 
To my question, “Why do you fish up- 
stream?” each one replied, “I’m fishing 
dry.” I could see that, and I knew they 
did so because they had read, or heard 
from others, that Mr. Halford claimed 
that on the Itchen and Test streams the 
trout are far too educated to rise at the 
artificial when fishing down such placid, 
clear streams, which is quite a sound and 
just theory for those conditions — in any 
country. 
The largest trout always choose the head of the runway, each fish rising to a chosen 
place after the surface food of swift streams, one behind the other 
On the other hand, our anglers were 
fishing up-stream in such wild, rapid 
water that a cocked fly was drowned as 
soon as it touched the surface, and they 
invariably caught fish with soaked flies. 
In such waters trout are wild because 
their food is more difficult to capture, 
and at the season mentioned they were 
^ <m 
stream flow 
When a dry-fly is cast up-stream the trout invariably swim forward and hit the gut 
leader before the fly is touched, whereas when drifting the “reverse” dry-fly 
down-stream the trout can swallow the fly without impediment 
ravenously hungry, when dry or wet flies 
were taken with equal vim. However, 
they caught fish, impressed with the idea 
that up-stream fishing did it. Over a 
stretch of twenty miles of the lower 
Beaverkill I do not know of a single 
place were large trout lie under a tran- 
quil surface, swift or slow. Without ex- 
ception, trout prefer to abide and feed 
under a violently agitated surface. If a 
trout’s eyesight is like our own, it is un- 
able to see far or clearly through an 
agitated surface of water, and it natu- 
rally follows that 
down-stream fishing 
does not alarm the 
fish to the extent 
that it is. credited. 
I am not Lery fa- 
miliar with mid- and 
far-western streams, 
hut friends who are 
tell me they are ex- 
actly similar in all 
respects to our most 
famous eastern 
streams, with clear, 
swift, mostly shallow 
water over pebbly 
bottoms, here and 
there deeper pools, 
exactly opposite to 
the British chalk streams, which arc 
deep, slow-mot'ing, muddy bottoms, very 
weedy, inducing an abundant growth of 
aquatic insects and other trout food. 
Taking either the Esophus, Beaverkill 
or Buskill as e.xamples, even down- 
stream fishing is hard wading. To wade 
up-stream, stepping over the large boul- 
ders in the h e a v y 
force of water, 
would tire out the 
average angler in 
wading only a few 
hundred feet. 
1 do not oppose 
existing methods for 
the sake of argu- 
ment on a know-it- 
all basis; my en- 
deavor is rather to 
seek by e a r nest 
study how best to 
make my own and 
other anglers' skill 
superior as an art 
in a c o m bat with 
the fast - gfTowing 
adroitness of large- 
size trout to evade 
capture in much- 
fished waters. Set- 
ting aside small fish easily caught, we 
may fairly suppose that mo.st trout over 
two pounds have been hooked or pricked 
over one hundred times during their life; 
(Continued on page 174) 
