Vol. XC. APRIL, 1920 No. 4 
THE WAYS OF THE CRAFTY TROUT 
A LITTLE EXPLORATION OF ONE’S OWN STATE OFTEN REVEALS THE 
FACT THAT GOOD FISHING CAN BE HAD NOT FAR FROM HOME 
T HIS tale has to do with the taking of 
trout. By reason of assiduous stock- 
ing by our State hatcheries, the 
trout, as a plentiful game fish, is coming 
back. While, because of deforestation 
and conversion into farm land, our 
streams are now noticeably warmer, so 
warm in fact that the native Salvelinus 
is fast disappearing, other varieties more 
used to warmer waters, notably brown 
trout- and western rainbows and cut- 
throats, are more than holding their own. 
I confess to many periods of discourage- 
ment, when in August I would see count- 
less thousands of state-hatched fingerling 
trout floating belly-up down stream, 
killed by the warmth of the waters flow- 
ing through farming districts. But these 
were practically all native, speckled 
trout, and many of them had been liber- 
ated under adverse conditions and so had 
been unable to survive. But the brown 
trout of Europe and the western rainbow 
seem to get along prodigiously in our 
eastern trout streams, and I must con- 
fess that I have had quite as many good 
fights, and all kinds of thrills, with a 
brownie or a rainbow at the end of my 
line as I ever did with the native sal- 
velinus. We cannot all go to Maine or 
the North Woods for the latter, but we 
can all fish the waters of our native state 
for the fish that we have paid our hatch- 
eries to produce, with our own license 
money. 
I once made a preachment on the text, 
“Know your State,” pointing out that far 
too many of us spend small fortunes get- 
ting to some famous locality for fish and 
game, when, right at our own door, are 
plenty of both and plenty of virgin for- 
est, if we only make a study of where to 
go in our own state. My own state of 
New Jersey is surely an unromantic, 
prosaic, little plot of ground, noted prin- 
cipally for its rich farms and its big 
manufacturing citio-. Yet, within our 
narrow confines, we have as good trout, 
bass, and salt water fishing, as good quail, 
grouse, duck and geese shooting, as fine 
deer hunting, as good wilderness canoe- 
By LIEUT. WARREN H. MILLER. U. S. N. R. 
ing, and as large areas of mountain and 
forest as you will find anywhere. It is 
all a matter of knowing where to go, and 
that in its turn depends on how much 
thought and study and exploration you 
give the matter. Using an ordinary state 
contour map, I have time and again 
picked out my jumping-off place, and nev- 
er yet have I been disappointed in either 
forest or game. 
There is a great deal in this exploring 
your own state. I once set out on a duck 
shooting trip, only to run into the finest 
quail shooting I have had, outside of cer- 
tain plantations in North and South Caro- 
lina — forty dollars carfare away, yet my 
fare to that port was less than two dol- 
lars. And, one day I set forth in faith, 
Signs of Spring 
hope and charity — to fall right into a 
wonderful grouse country in North Jer- 
sey, when New York and Pennsylvania 
were both reporting great scarcity. And, 
down in a little sandy stream in the south 
part of the state, I have had as great 
days trout fishing as ever in the Rockies, 
repeating the experience, later, in one of 
our northern mountain streams, up in the 
hilly, northwestern corner of the state. 
I dwell thus long on the virtue of know- 
ing one’s own state because I happen to 
know that your state is as well stocked 
with fish and game as any, for the dis- 
tribution nowadays is quite universal, 
only you must know where to look. Right 
within a few dollars carfare of your 
home town is as good trout fishing as any- 
where, and, as for bass — well! — go cast 
your neighbor’s pond! This “fished out” 
cry is a great thing, a sort of disease. 
I never saw a “fished out” lake yet that I 
could not yank a bass, a pike, or a lake 
trout out of! 
Which leads us to the reflection that 
perhaps the tackle may have something 
to do with it. I once fished a bass lake 
that had been plugged and frogged to 
death. The bass were fed up on those 
delicacies, but I put on a red Shannon 
fly, with a pork-rind minnow, and got 
eight strikes in one turn of the pond, 
keeping two of the largest bass for sup- 
per. And, I once followed Emlyn Gill, 
author of Practical Dry Fly Fishing, up 
a stream that had been whipped until the 
trout would take nothing, and saw him 
catch thirty large trout in one morning, 
with dry fly tackle and dry fly methods. 
Of course, I hasten to add, he put back 
all but a few of those trout, as the law 
does not allow one man to hog thirty 
trout anywhere, nowadays. 
Let us therefore pass over in one para- 
graph the better-known methods of tak- 
ing trout and get this comparatively new 
method of the dry fly in America. In 
the early season you cannot beat worms 
for bait. The waters are roily, the in- 
sects not hatched out yet, and the trout 
are feeding on something substantial 
Contents Copyrighted, 1920, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
