Vol. xc. 
JUNE 1920 
No. 6 
DRIFTING WITH THE DRY-FLY 
FISHING LORE GLEANED FROM BETWEEN COVERS OF TIMBERED WATERWAYS, WITH 
CRESTED RIFTS AND PLACID POOLS FURNISHING THE LEAVES OF THE TREATISE 
N O claim of priority is herein made 
for the employment of the dry-fly in 
drifting with boat or canoe. There 
is likelihood that other drifting dry-fly 
anglers have preceded me down the 
stream of angling archives, and my craft 
following after time has obliterated the 
wake which earlier marked their course, 
I have failed to perceive the evidence of 
their passage. 
In extenuation of ignorance of prede- 
cessors in this particular field of angling 
endeavor, if such there has been, may 
further be advanced {he plea that such 
dry-fly lore as may have come to me 
has in' large measure been gleaned from 
between covers of ti nbered waterways, 
with glacial drift, crested rifts and placid 
pools furnishing the leaves of the treatise. 
On backwood’s watercourses where since 
early boyhood my fly-fishing for trout has 
largely been carried on, latterly with the 
adoption of the dry-fly, I have often been 
compelled from necessity, due to a depth 
of water which has precluc' d wading, to 
heavily wooded borders of brooks and to 
the running of stretches of mountain 
rivers between high banks, where the 
distance to desirable reaches of water 
has rendered switch casting imprac- 
ticable, to cast from boat or canoe. On 
such wilderness streams my dry-fly cast- 
ing has been of a very simple order, how- 
ever; no grease or oil has entered into 
the procedure, a couple of false casts 
sufficing to dry the fly all that has been 
needed for the short drift required to 
obtain a rise. 
The method of drifting with the dry- 
fly which in its application to personal 
experience I am about to describe, was 
elaborated in May, 1916, while I was lo- 
cated on the West Canada Creek in the 
southern foothills of the Adirondacks. 
Becoming helplessly infected by the 
surf fishing “bug” while snipe shooting 
down on Fire Island the fall before, I 
found it incumbent to effect a readjust- 
ment of the ways of many years in order 
to enable myself to devote a portion of 
the time at my disposal to indulgence 
By TAMARACfC 
in beach fishing, and to this end I de- 
termined, not without an effort, to reduce 
the month customarily spent in the woods 
to ten days. How to do this without sac- 
rificing the excellent trout fishing to 
which I had always been accustomed did 
not prove an altogether hopeless problem 
either. 
The Adirondacks primarily entering my 
thoughts as the logical alternative, my 
mind naturally reverted to haunts of 
early days on the tortuous headwaters 
of the Oswegatchie and in the region 
about the West Canada Lakes. But while 
the upper Oswegatchie is an ideal dry- 
fly stream and its four and five pound 
trout were a haunting temptation, in or- 
der to secure this fishing it would have 
been necessary to await the ascent of the 
fish from Cranberry Lake. It is in July 
The Drifter 
and August that the big trout seek the 
spring holes in the bends of the Oswegat- 
chie for miles above the lake, and May 
was the month in which it was decided, 
with surf fishing as a later objective, that 
I should go to the woods a-fishing. 
Moreover, no normal fly-fisherman is able 
to restrain his yearnings until midsum- 
mer, even with the certainty of securing 
four and five pound wild fontinalis as the 
reward of patience. 
The West Canadas, whose nooks and 
crannies were an open book to me ere axe 
other than that of trapper or of hardy 
camper had awakened an echo among 
their primeval timberlands I at once dis- 
missed from consideration. Many weari- 
some miles had I traveled through bog 
and uphill over those trails to the music 
of creaking pack straps. Now the advent 
of team and wood-shod sled has made the 
West Canada Lakes accessible without 
undue effort or inconvenience, but the 
journey in and out would have consumed 
a good share of the time to which I was 
limiting myself. 
At this juncture came a letter from 
Raymond Spears telling me that I would 
do well to run up and fish the head of 
the new Hinckley Reservoir and the West 
Canada Creek for a mile or two above the 
point of its entrance into the reservoir, 
while the fishing continued good. 
This advice coincided with certain no- 
tions of my own, and the old outfit was 
assembled and shipped ahead, and noon 
of May 16 found the guide, Frank and 
myself with trammel, dining fly and tent 
set up, sitting down to our first meal in 
camp; this was to be our shelter for the 
allotted ten days. 
T HE Hinckley Reservoir, which was 
completed a couple of years since, 
is formed by the construction of a 
ninety foot dam immediately above 
Hinckley Village, old Gang Mills, a name 
dear to the Adirondack camper of thirty 
or forty years ago. Gang Mills, before 
the coming of the Adirondack and St. 
Lawrence railroad which cleft the Adi- 
Contenfcs Copyrighted, 1920, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
