FOREST AND STREAM. 
I 
338 
Thaddeus Norris, who wrote the “American 
Angler’s Book” about 1863. He gives an in¬ 
stance of great success with dry fly on the Will- 
owemock, when wet fly was useless. In more 
recent years this method of fishing has been 
much resorted to by anglers of experience, 
where trout were shy and hard to take. The Sun 
man also says that no dry flies are tied in 
America. This is another error. I have seen 
beautiful work done by others, and tie all that 
I use myself. 1 have had a box of English dry 
flies for fifteen years, and used up some of 
them. I found out, however, that by following 
the colors of our own natural .flies, which were 
on the water, I caught more trout, even when 
the work was rougher and less perfect to the 
eye. I believe that the entomology of American 
trout streams is much richer and more varied 
than anything known to fishermen in the United 
Kingdom. 
We have innumerable small ephemera, for in¬ 
stance, but also a great number of large flies 
belonging to that family, while in England, 
Scotland and Ireland they have only two, the 
May fly and March-brown. English dry-fly 
anglers usually have a contempt for the wet fly, 
and seem to imagine that the only way to fish 
wet, is with several flies cast down stream and 
dragging. This is absurd, as one constantly 
sees men casting up stream to rising fish. The 
only difference in method is that the fly is wet, 
not dry. 
I admit that dry fly-fishing is most scientific, 
most difficult, particularly on such rivers as those 
in the south of England, or anywhere, where 
the water is still and flows very slowly. Even 
with fine-drawn gut and tiny flies, the cast which 
falls light as a snow flake, or feather, upon the 
bosom of a quiet pool, is hard to accomplish, 
and with a burning sun high in the heavens, no 
matter how fine the gut may be, it is very con¬ 
spicuous. 
On many of our trout streams we have heavy 
rises of natural flies in the early part of the 
season, but if ,we joined the cult of the dry-fly 
purist and cast only to a rising trout at all 
seasons, we would have a dull time of it. Not 
only this, but we would miss some of the most 
delightful and truly scientific fishing of the year, 
when the water is very low and clear and when 
a dry fly is often most successful. 1 Our methods 
of fishing must vary with the season and locality. 
We cannot adopt one style in this big country 
and practice it everywhere and all the time. 
Fishing dry early in the season, on, a roaring 
torrent, would be love’s labor lost indeed, and 
in many wild regions the fly must be used as a 
lure, not as an insect floating upon the water. 
Personally. I would rather fish the old streams 
which have been known to anglers for genera¬ 
tions, where the trout are hard to take and 
where there are many natural flies. Here, 
whether we fish wet or dry, some little time de¬ 
voted to the study of entomology is not wasted, 
but adds greatly to our pleasure, and often to 
our success. I11 America we can find the kind 
of fishing we prefer. We can even find a good 
imitation of the English chalk stream, if we wish. 
There are several such that I know of. and prob¬ 
ably others. Yet I imagine that all fly-fishers 
would enjoy and profit by a visit to the Test 
and Itchen. There, if one is lucky, he may see 
some of the great past masters of the dry fly at 
work, men who think, talk and breathe feathers, 
quills, hackles and perfect dry flies, who can 
drive twenty-five yards of heavy line in the 
teeth of a gale of wind and place a tiny dun or 
spinner, floating and cocked, a few inches above 
a rising.trout. It must be confessed that this is 
the perfection of the art. 
I wish that our small-mouth black bass was 
more of an insect feeder. I have not had the 
good fortune to find this fish rising freely in 
many localities where it was taken in numbers 
with bait. The big-mouth of the South rises 
freely to the proper flies, but it lias not the 
strength and endurance of its Northern cousin. 
I have killed small-mouth bass up to three 
pounds and a half with fly, and what- a fight 
they put up! Imagine the sport these, fish would 
afford if taken with small flies and fine tackle! 
Even a pond pickerel makes things quite 
lively on a fly-rod. Give him a big enough fly 
and pikey rises very freely. Probably the 
great maskinonge himself would rise at some¬ 
thing gay and brilliant three or four inches long. 
I wish some one would try this where 
maskinonge are fairly abundant. I think an 
enlargement of a good pickerel fly would do the 
trick. It should be tried on the largest Pennell 
Limerick hook procurable with loop of wire or 
three-ply heavy gut, at head. 
Trout fly-fishing is nearly over, and we must 
turn to other sports for recreation. Some men 
love - the gun as well as the rod, yet shooting 
does not take the grip that fly-fishing does. 
Who ever heard of a man who lost his love of 
fishing in old age. The gun may be put away 
for all time, but not the rod and flies. It is 
raining again as I write, but I hope to have a 
good day on fine water far up-stream before 
September 1. Theodore Gordon. 
Fish and Irrigation Ditches. 
Dr. James A. Henshall, who is in charge of 
the Government hatching station at Bozeman. 
Mont., discusses in an interview in the Butte 
Evening News the causes of the decrease of fish 
in Montana waters. He says: 
“There are a number of causes to account for 
the decrease of fish in inland waters. The one 
most destructive in eastern States is the con¬ 
tamination and pollution of the streams by the 
offal and by-products of paper mills, starch fac¬ 
tories, oil refineries, distilleries, sewage, etc. 
The first effect of this pollution of the streams 
is to destroy the minute organisms that con¬ 
stitute the food of the newly hatched fry and 
young 'fish. The young fish, being deprived of 
their food, perish at once. Adult fish can with¬ 
stand a certain amount of impurity in water, 
for a time, but eventually they also succumb. 
“The fouling of water by the smelting of ores 
and its disastrous effect on fish is patent to every 
resident of Butte. To the washing of coal and 
to the mining of ores is also to be attributed a 
great loss of fish life. Where the fish food is not 
entirely destroyed by the soluble substances, 
the insoluble matter is deposited on the spawn¬ 
ing beds, smothering or killing the eggs and 
newly hatched fry. Sawdust and coal dust are 
destructive in this way. 
“The argument is often advanced that the va¬ 
rious industries mentioned must, as a matter of 
course, be maintained, even at the cost of the 
loss of all fish life in inland waters. But this 
is not necessarily the case. The evil can be 
prevented, in a great measure, by compell¬ 
ing such plants to run the offal and waste 
water in settling ponds before flowing into the 
streams, as is now being done in many places. 
"By the vigilance of game and fish wardens 
the minor evils of illegal fishing, illegal sale of 
fish and dynamiting can, to a certain extent, be 
prevented, as punishment for these offenses is 
provided for by statutory enactment. But there 
is another agency of fish destruction in Mon¬ 
tana, so appalling and widespread that in com¬ 
parison with it all the'other causes mentioned 
sink into utter insignificance. It is the whole¬ 
sale destruction of fish, both large and small, 
by means of irrigation ditches. 
“No one, except the ranchers and those who 
have investigated the matter, can. have a reali¬ 
zation of the awful loss of fish life, of the wanton 
sacrifice of millions of God’s' creatures, left to 
gasp out their little lives on the meadows and 
grain fields all over the great State of Montana. 
Often the stench arising from the decaying trout 
—the loveliest object on God’s footstool-—is in¬ 
tolerable; ‘it smells to heaven.’ And -yet the 
past Legislatures of the State have utterly ig¬ 
nored any attempt to prevent it. 
“There is a needless and unwarranted oppo¬ 
sition to the screening of ditches at the intake, 
not so much on the part of the farmers and 
ranchers as by the average member of the State 
Legislature. The rancher knows that the 
streams are clear of leaves and trash in the 
summer, and that but little attention would be 
required to keep the screens clean. I know of 
ranchers who, of their own accord, have put in 
screens at the head of their ditches, and who 
assure me that but little attention is needed to 
[Sept. i. 1906. 
keep them clean during the season of irrigation. 
I do not believe that farmers are more selfish 
or thoughtless than other men, or have less re¬ 
gard for life, even that of a helpless fish. And if 
a screen law were enacted I believe it would 
be cheerfully obeyed. 
“But in order to do away with the objection 
to screens I devised a simple paddle wheel to 
be placed at the intake of ditches, which, while 
needing no attention, after being put in place, 
would be more effective in preventing the pas¬ 
sage of fish than a screen. Such a provision 
was included in the fish and game law before the 
last Legislature, but it was eliminated by the 
fish and game committee. Comment is un¬ 
necessary. 
“The streams of Montana are as yet pure 
and undefiled to a great extent, and should be 
almost as productive of fish life as when first 
viewed by Lewis and Clark. But unless the 
awful slaughter of the innocents by irrigation 
ditches is stopped, and stopped now, the beauti¬ 
ful mountain streams of the State will soon be 
but barren wastes, void of fish life, for which 
not the rancher, but the representatives of the 
people—the Legislature—will be to blame.” 
About Kingfishers. 
My total for five years to date foots up 189 
fish thieves of the above named type. For evi¬ 
dence in the case I have saved most of the wings 
(none for sale), and have a goodly pillow made 
from the feathers, that I intend to use in my 
camping excursions, which are very many. Some 
careless linguist some time said, “It takes a deal 
of sap to make a little sugar”; but he could have 
illustrated his idea of quantity far more forcibly 
if he said, it takes a pile of kingfishers to get 
feathers enough for a pillow—400. If any one 
doubts this solemn declaration, try it. The car¬ 
casses are fed to the fish, and thus the poor 
devils appropriate their whole business outright 
to a different purpose from what was intended 
when they started out on their foraging expe¬ 
ditions. I have an idea that a pillow of this 
sort used in camp will carry with it a bit of con¬ 
solation; that it will be a little luminary to light 
up recollections and impart a glow to the ro¬ 
mance of snoring away a night in the wilder¬ 
ness; besides, the head may rest a little easier 
than on a pile of brush, a pair of boots, or on 
a spider turned bottom side up. 
I value this pillow very highly from a financial 
standpoint. (This is also not for sale.) As¬ 
suming that a man values his time worth $2 per 
day, he starts out to shoot kingfishers for a 
living, and bags one every three days, which 
would be good work here, each bird costing $6. 
This multiplied by 400, the number required to 
do a good pillow, equals $2,400 for the pillow, 
and as the birds stay with us about 200 days of 
the year, it will require exactly six years to do 
the work. Don’t you see how figures swell? 
Whose head is so heavy that it can't find repose 
on so valuable a record as this? Why the Afri¬ 
can diamonds are nowhere. 
I get these birds shooting and with small steel 
traps set around my fish ponds. A kingfisher 
is shy and considers himself powerfully smart, 
but his strength is - in his weakness, and he is 
just as apt to get into the wrong pen as the 
rest of us. Set two or three round stakes around 
a pond, if there are no trees very near, or set 
them in the water, leaving a few feet out of 
water; fasten a small trap firmly to the top. 
By regulating the catch or latch make the jaws 
set low and the pan high, otherwise they will 
light on the jaws instead of the pan. Set the 
trap, cramp the spring around close to the jaw, 
and hoe corn till you hear a famous squalling, 
such as a kingfisher never makes when he is 
coming up out of the water with a favorite 
hybrid in his fish-stabber. These birds prefer a 
stake or a cray on a stump, over or near the 
water, and if a thirty-five cent steel trap happens 
to grace the top of it, they are sure to set their 
illustrious feet in it. 
Some old smarts are exceedingly intellectual, 
and take the hint at first, but their gastronomical 
machinery works so furiously after having 
looked down on what is to them, at least, a fine 
