May, 1919 
FOREST AND STREAM 
203 
favorable atmospheric conditions during 
the day. When a hatch of flies come 
out and swarm over the surface of the 
water, the trout begin to feed. They 
take the kind of fly that is on the water 
and seldom strike at another. This 
means that it is always a good idea to 
catch one of the flies on the water and 
use it as a basis of selection when choos- 
ing the flies to string on the leader. 
Try to get the same one from the as- 
sortment in your fly book or one simi- 
lar. 
As a general rule, there are a few 
old stand-bys that seldom fail to catch 
some trout. They are the Black Gnat, 
the Queen, the Professor, the White 
Winged Coachman, and the Great Dunn. 
It is always safe to have one of these 
flies and sometimes two on the leader. 
Freak flies are more attractive in the 
store window than anywhere else, but 
once in a great while they will attract 
the trout when nothing else will. Let 
me tell you an instance that has some 
interest besides the question at hand. 
The reader will remember the Austin 
Flood, that swept the town of Austin, 
Pennsylvania, into Kingdom Come, a 
few years ago. Above the town was a 
pulp and paper mill, which had as a 
part of its equipment, a huge dam across 
the valley, backing up a volume of wa- 
ter for a mile or more. The stream be- 
fore it was dammed, used to hold a few 
trout, but after this great pond was 
foi-med they were forgotten. For years 
they must have grown here unmolested. 
I was fishing a year after the disas- 
ter, twenty miles below the dam on one 
of the small mountain streams that 
flows into the Sinnamahoning Creek. 
The water was low in the main stream, 
and probably accounted for the pres- 
ence of some of the largest brook trout 
I have ever seen in the smaller streams. 
In fact, they were so big that they could 
hardly get over the ripples in travelling 
from one pool to another. Every deep 
pool held four 
or five huge sil- 
very trout — the 
silver shade un- 
common to trout 
that were na- 
tives of this 
stream. They 
were beauties 
that had fat- 
tened in that 
big Austin dam 
and had been 
carried out into 
the river with 
the flood. 
Strange to 
say, I tried 
every known 
lure for a solid 
week trying to 
tempt those 
trout but with 
no avail. They 
simply would 
not eat. One 
night just about 
dusk, after I 
had been whip- 
ping the stream 
for an hour 
without even 
getting a rise, I selected, half in fun, 
from my fly book a freak fly. It was 
unusually large — large enough to scare 
most trout. It contained about every 
bright color in the rainbow and had a 
long bright green tail. The first time 
it struck the water a slippery big fellow 
churned up after it, and I had a pretty 
fight landing him. In about an hour I 
filled my basket with some of the finest 
speckled beauties I have ever caught. 
My freak fly was worn threadbare be- 
fore I stopped, as it was the only one 
they would strike. Since then, I have 
tried the same kind of fly a dozen times, 
but with no success. The incident goes 
to show how uncertain and, consequent- 
ly, how fascinating fly fishing is. 
T he real fly fisherman has an as- 
sortment of a hundred different 
flies of all sizes and varieties and 
takes pride in their care and the judg- 
ment exercised in selecting the right one 
on a certain evening. When one real- 
izes that the hook attached to the fly 
is usually not much larger than one 
that could be made from the minute 
hand of your watch, some idea is gained 
of the skill required to hook a trout 
when he strikes. The method is to have 
a limber pole, correctly balanced so that 
when the fish hits the fly the spring of 
the pole automatically buries the barb 
of the hook, but does not tear it out 
again. I have seen hundreds of fly fish- 
ermen jerk when the trout sti'ikes and 
then wonder why they lost it. If the 
pole is a trifle too stiff, the spring of 
its middle joint will tear the hook out 
as effectively as a strong jerk. I have 
been ten years getting a pole built with 
the exact balance that reduces the spring 
to a fine art. Now, I seldom lose a 
trout. They hook themselves. 
Don’t spat the fly on the water, it 
frightens the fish. As your leader is 
about to light on the surface, draw it 
toward you slightly, so that it drops si- 
lently. Imitate the fly. As you draw 
the fly toward you across the pool, give 
the line a slight trembling motion. It 
will often coax out a fellow that has 
ignored the first cast. If you prick a 
trout and lose him, you might as well 
pass on to the next hole — he’ll not bother 
you again. 
Trout live in the clear, cold water of 
our mountain streams, preferring the 
quiet seclusion and protection of the 
forest. Occasionally there is a stretch 
of good fishing in an open field, but if 
you’ll recall, the field was usually sand- 
wiched in between two forests. Woods, 
because of fallen trees that lie across 
the course of the stream and the accu- 
mulations of brush that form swift deep 
pools, is their natural habitation. If 
you are a poor amateur at the sport, a 
good fisherman will often follow behind 
you and fill his basket, because he knows 
where the trout lie. You must know 
“the holes.” Furthermore, they will be 
in different parts of the pool at differ- 
ent times of the day. Early in the morn- 
ing the trout are at the head of the 
pool, hidden in the deep water, under a 
log, a brush pile or a rock. During the 
day, they are in the center of the pool 
and late at night are found feeling in the 
shallow, still water, just at the point the 
pool breaks into ripples. It is for this 
reason that bait is better in the morn- 
ing. It lends itself to being slipped 
quietly into difficult crunies, where it 
can sink near the bottom. Before fish- 
ing in a pool, stop and make a study of 
it from a safe distance, to find the best 
point of approach and figure out the 
place that the trout will most probably 
be. After a few studied approaches, 
the art becomes an instinct and you find 
yourself as sleuthy and cunning as the 
trout himself; in fact the whole proce- 
dure, if you are a true sportsman and 
not a so-called “fish-hog,” is a game be- 
tween you and the speckled beauty, to 
see which can outwit the other. Nine 
cases out of ten 
the trout wins. 
L ET’S look at 
the sport 
from the 
trout’s point of 
view. With him, 
it’s a game of 
life and death. 
You’re not his 
only enemy. He 
is continually 
protecting him- 
self from a host 
of others, the 
water-snake, the 
weasel, the 
mink, the king- 
fisher and a 
number of other 
enemies make 
him their prey. 
Then he must 
prepare for a 
drought and 
move down 
stream into 
deeper water in 
dry season. Did 
you ever notice 
that a trout 
Knee-deep in the habitat of the trout 
