684 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May 31, 1913 
Trout Fishing Emergencies 
F LY-FISHING for trout to the uninitiated 
is a “cut and dried’’ matter, success ap¬ 
pearing to follow the exercise of an ade¬ 
quate amount of skill—plus good tackle and 
fair luck—much as a matter of course. On the 
face of it the game seems not to offer much 
varietj'. In reality it would seem that every 
good trout added to the creel represents an 
individual victory—an emergency which has 
risen (to the fly) and has been successfully met 
by the angler. 
A day on a trout stream is by way of be¬ 
ing a sequence of emergencies; the successful 
fly-fisherman is he who can most consistently 
rise to the occasion, when the “occasion” has, 
or has not, risen to the fly. All of which is 
another way of saying that trout fishing 
emergencies are generally of two sorts, those 
arising prior and those subsequent to the rise 
of the trout. Assuming that the angler is one 
of average ability with an efficient outfit tackle- 
wise, let us consider some of the situations, or 
emergencies, wherein personality and ability to 
suit immediate means to an end figure heavily 
in the ultimate score. 
There's the matter of “striking” your fish. 
On a good day this is an emergency often re¬ 
peated; always it calls for quick and concerted 
action of eye, brain and hand. Every fly-fish¬ 
erman can recall with facility days when many 
chances were offered and few taken. True it 
is that sometimes “short” rises are the cause 
of repeated misses in striking, but it is prob¬ 
ably safe to say that in the majority of cases 
the fault lies with the fisherman. The “psy¬ 
chological moment” is well exemplified by the 
swift rise of a trout to the fly—instant action is 
imperative or the emergency has tried the 
angler and found him wanting. 
It is not customary to speak of “condition” 
in connection with a sport reputedly so non- 
athletic as angling. There are various kinds of 
fishing. Some of them demand merely infinite 
patience and the ability to wear out a boat seat. 
Masterly inactivity of this sort is far removed 
from stream fly-fishing for brook trout. In its 
very essence the game is one of constant ac¬ 
tivity—and condition does, indeed, play no little 
part in the fly-fisherman’s success. 
The man who exercises solely in a swivel- 
chair cannot for long stand the grief of wading 
and whipping the average rugged trout stream. 
Muscles and nerves weaken in concert and a 
tired-out man with shaky nerves is better off 
at home. To merely rise to the occasion in 
every instance—or a majority of them—when 
a trout offers to the fly requires good muscular 
condition and a steady nerve; moreover, ability 
to strike your fish is only one of the many 
emergencies of fly-fishing which render the 
pastime one of exhausting interest to the gentle 
men of sedentary habits. 
Also there’s the trifling formality of land¬ 
ing your trout after you have struck him—if 
you have. Experts have formulated a few good 
rules for the proper handling of tackle when a 
By SAMUEL C. CAMP 
Photograph by the Author. 
fish is on—which is all very well when the 
quarry campaigns in the orthodox way. Know¬ 
ing the general nature of the trout with which 
you have connected, whether brook, brown or 
rainbow, one is supposed to know about what 
the fish will do in the way of resistance, to-wit: 
A rainbow when hooked almost invariably 
jumps; a brown trout most frequently makes 
a long, swift run eventually followed by one 
or more leaps; a brook trout bores down and 
away. But this is wholly omitting the unex¬ 
pected moves of individual fish. Really, in 
“THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT.” 
landing trout, it is the unexpected which most 
frequently happens, thereby bringing things to 
a focus most clearly centered upon the presence 
of mind and deftness of hand of the angler. 
One has seen a brown trout, after a long, 
stubborn resistance, slowly nursed in to the 
fisherman, when it leaped high above the water 
and came back squarely in the landing net. If 
the net had been elsewhere. Again, one has 
seen a fine “brownie” safely landed by a mere 
twist of the gut leader about its gills, the fly 
having come away in the fight. In point of fact, 
nearly every fruitful day on the stream is a 
tale of emergencies met or succumbed to in the 
way of landing your trout. While general rules 
have been laid down as to the safe handling 
of a hooked trout, the angler should never lose 
sight of the fact that the eccentricities of re¬ 
sistance of individual fish cannot be foreseen, 
and that, in the absence of any forewarning, 
ability to do the right thing at the right time, 
instantly, intuitively, is the price of success. 
The leap of a trout affords a crisis suf¬ 
ficiently acute to tax the nerve of veteran and 
tenderfoot alike. The Eastern brook trout, 
Salvelinus fontinalis, does not, as a rule, leap 
unless the angler holds him very hard, but if 
forced he will throw himself out in a vicious 
effort to break the connection. The brown 
trout, Sal mo fario, leaps quite often when be¬ 
ing played on the rod, but not with the facility 
and frequency of the rainbow, Salnio irideus. 
This latter fish is a chronic and very capable 
leaper; it is fun to see even the little fellows, 
the quarter-pounders, come out of the water 
with all the vicious energy of a three-pound 
black bass. 
The counter-move of the orthodox and 
quick-thinking angler is to drop the rod-point 
a little. Unless this is done very quickly the 
fish is back in the water—very probably to stay 
there. At any rate, the leap of a two-pound 
trout is a “real live” emergency—a matter of 
acute anxiety at the time and a memory sweet 
or bitter in accordance with the outcome. 
Not, by any means, that all the crises of 
the trout fly-fisherman’s day on the stream have 
to do with the rise, the strike and the subse¬ 
quent play fortunate, or the contrary, as the 
case may be. After all, there is but one form 
of genuine angling—fly-fishing. Of fly-fishing 
for trout, broadly speaking, there are two kinds; 
the light, refined fishing for educated trout in 
the public well-whipped streams of civilization, 
and the heavier, less scientific and exacting 
sport found on the practically virgin waters of 
the wilderness. The genuine angler loves the 
easy and very resultful fishing in the big woods 
for the forest itself. As for fishing purely, the 
finesse, strategy and all-round cleverness of 
hand and expedient imperative for success on 
the civilized trout stream make the game more 
worth while. 
A passable creel of trout at the end of a 
day on one of our near-home Eastern trout 
streams represents good hard work and the 
solving of more than one difficulty in the way 
of inducing a trout to rise to a “counterfeit 
fly.” Moreover, in the process of thus imi¬ 
tating the natural ephemera with deadly intent 
arise tactical emergencies which demand good 
judgment and no little knowledge of stream- 
life plus the power of accurate observation. In 
fly-fishing, even as in still-hunting, it is the pur¬ 
suit, not the kill, which affords the essential 
fascination of the sport. 
Of course, in the final analysis, fly-fishing is 
a gambling transaction; but science has much 
weight in determining which way the cat will 
jump. -A.S an instance, take the case of the dry- 
fly fisherman who has just spotted the rise of 
a good trout in a quiet pool. As a rule, with 
educated trout, when the fish is feeding upon 
