Oct. 14, 1911] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
575 
THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY. 
When the wise man laid it down that there 
were tnree things which were too wonderful for 
iiHn—yea, four which he knew not—he came to 
the climax with "the way of a man with a 
maid. ’ borne future Solomon will end with a 
fifth—the way of a trout with a fly—for it com¬ 
bines the poise of the eagle in the air, the swift 
certainty of a serpent upon a rock, and the mys¬ 
tery of the way of a ship in the midst of the 
sea, with the inca.culableness of the way of a 
man with a maid. Uur aviators seem to be on 
the.r way toward a solution of the way of the 
eagle in the air. The mystery of the way of 
.a ship in the midst of the sea has yielded a.l its 
secrets to the persistence of modern man, but 
the way of a man with a maid and the way of 
a trout with a fly remain with us to delight 
thousands of generations yet unborn. 
The mouth of a trout is, relatively to his 
weight and length, larger than that of all, I 
think, of our freshwater fishes, except perhaps 
that of the pike. It is serrated all round the 
edge with fine teeth, and the roof of the mouth 
and the tongue are armed with far more for¬ 
midable ones. For the purposes of taking and 
retaining the fly I cannot conceive that these 
teeth are of much service. They seem better 
suited to the purpose of the capture o.f minnows 
and other small fry, which but for them might 
escape by wriggling, and I have little doubt that 
the escapes so often made by a too lightly held 
trout are often due to his using the tongue teeth 
as a sort of toothpick to extract the hook from 
the roof of his mouth or the side of his jaw. 
If the ang.er in his bath makes the experi¬ 
ment of trying from below to catch some small 
floating object on the surface, he will find it 
evade him again and again, pushed away by the 
current set up by his approaching hand, and it 
looks a miracle that the same thing should not 
occur with the trout, especially when his ap¬ 
proach is swift. But if the feeding trout be 
watched, it will be noted that, as he rises to the 
fly, there is, as he opens his mouth, an expan¬ 
sion of the gills, which carries a stream of water, 
and with it the insect, in with a rush. What is 
the process by which, on the water being ejected 
through the gill, the fly, natural or artificial, is 
retained is not known to me. It may be an 
operation of the tongue, but I think not. In 
any case, until the water is sufficiently expelled 
to enable the fish to feel or taste the capture, 
there is necessarily an interval, which constitutes 
the angler’s opportunity, when that fly is his arti¬ 
ficial one, to pull the hook home. When the fish 
is taking larvae, or nymphs, or other subaqueous 
life carried by the current, the process is just 
the same. It is probable that if, in either case, 
the fish lipped the hook or the gut, there would 
be an instantaneous ejection of the dangerous 
morsel. Taste (which is, after ail, a phase or 
development of the sense of touch) would warn 
him that at best the object was indigestible and 
unprofitable. Experience might hint that it was 
dangerous. When trout are well on they take 
with a, big gulp, often accompanied by a distinct 
“gluck” or smack of the lips, but there are days 
when the fly seems to be sipped in with a mini¬ 
mum of water through scarcely opened lips, and 
on such days the angler is apt to miss an abnor¬ 
mal proportion of rises. 
This, then, being the method of the trout in 
feeding, one can readily see that minute accuracy 
of observation of the relative parts of a fly, as 
regards arrangement and proportion, is not of 
consequence to him, except to guard him against 
the angler. Innumerable natural flies come down 
to him partially entangled in their shucks (is it 
possible that the bronzed hook is ever taken for 
an adhering shuck?),, or in disarray through 
some misfortune or another, and all that is es¬ 
sential for feeding purposes is that he shou’d 
take that which in size and in combination of 
co ors is like what he has been feeding on. Any 
closer noting of detail would be as much thrown 
away as would rm’nute observation of the detail 
of each fish be thrown away in the case of a 
diner eating whitebait at the Carlton. Each fly 
is too tiny a morsel, and passes too quickly, for 
much leisure to be spent on inspection.—Sea- 
torth and Soforth, in the Field. 
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