366 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 23, 1912 
Little Talks About Fly-Fishing 
By THEODORE GORDON 
T o me. as a small boy, the very name “trout” 
carried with it something of wonder and 
magic, and visions of a rare and extra¬ 
ordinary fish, which could be captured only by 
the elect, persons of unusual skill and acumen. 
Any boy who had caught a trout gained dignity 
at once, and was looked up to with considerable 
admiration as well as a little envy. The taking 
of that first pink-spotted beauty was an event 
of the first importance in a boy’s life, and when 
at last he was successful in twitching the small 
wriggling captive from beneath the caving 
bank of the meadow brook, he grew several 
inches in his own estimation. 
We always began with worm bait and ad¬ 
vanced through a course of grasshoppers and 
broken rods to the artificial fly. We knew 
nothing of playing a strong flsh on delicate 
tackle. It was always a case of pull Dick, pull 
devil; and when by some happy accident a really 
large trout was hooked, the results were some¬ 
times more disastrous to the boy than to the 
trout. To break one’s “pole” and lose a big 
trout was a frightful calamity. It gave a fel¬ 
low a sense of goneness at the pit of his stomach 
and the feeling of acute disappointment was 
apt to dwell with him for many days. 
I remember very well the first fly-fishing that I 
witnessed on the old Le Tort stream. It was 
on what we called the Meadow, where the water 
was wide and slow flowing. The angler was 
beautifully equipped with a first-rate split bam¬ 
boo rod and fine tackle, and was casting a 
long line with a single fly at the end of his 
leader. He had taken twenty-flve trout, a pro¬ 
digious number in my eyes, and very kindly 
allowed me to tag along beside him. His skill¬ 
ful work was a revelation to me, and he gave 
me my first artificial fly. It was a popular 
pattern in Pennsylvania in those days and was 
known as the Patton, or Dr. Patton. The 
wings were of guinea fowl, hackle from a brown 
cock and the body was made of brown silk, 
ribbed with flat gold tinsel. 
Nothing would satisfy me after this experi¬ 
ence, until I had patched up a fly-rod from the 
remains of several old rods, and the first holi¬ 
day was spent in fly-fishing with the only fly I 
possessed. I was clever enough to spend my 
time upon the shallows where the small trout, 
of little discretion or experience, dwelt, and I 
succeeded in catching quite a number of these. 
Their size was a matter of no consequence, for 
I had actually taken trout on the artificial fly 
that were good enough for anybody, and made 
any boy realize that he was a scientific indi¬ 
vidual and without doubt a skilled angler. Those 
were halcyon days that followed, and thousands 
of men in England and America can remember 
experiences of much the same sort. 
One of the delightful things about ang¬ 
ling is that one is always progressing, 
always learning something new and interesting, 
and this is particularly true of fly-fishing. I 
well remember my excitement and pleasure 
when I stumbled upon F. M. Halford’s books on 
dry fly-fishing, in the autumn of 1890. English¬ 
men had been using a dry fly upon the chalk 
streams for many years, but its use was by no 
means general and we heard but little of it. Old 
Ogden began about i860, I believe, and he is 
said to have been very skillful. The use of the 
live May fly with a blow line was common at 
that time, but after seeing him use the arti¬ 
ficial May with success, the natural fly was 
prohibited on some waters. There is no doubt 
that those first in the game, upon these pro¬ 
lific South of England streams, had a bully 
time of it. There were lots of good trout in 
those days, and although they were well fed 
and very shy, they had not been much fished 
for in that way; that is, with a dry fly floating 
upon the surface and usually a fair imitation of 
the natural fly upon which they were feeding. 
There is no doubt that we have learned much 
from English works on angling, but conditions 
in this country are rarely the same as those 
found upon the well preserved slow-flowing 
rivers of the South of England. We have, in¬ 
deed, a few streams flowing from great springs 
in the limestone rock, where somewhat similar 
conditions may be found, where, for instance, 
the supply of food is bountiful, insect life 
abundant, and the water in many parts slow- 
flowing and of fair depth. Usually, however, we 
fish the mountain streams, of which there are 
so many in the United States. These are of all 
sizes and the conditions differ widely in various 
parts of the country. Insect life may be found 
in great abundance, or there may be very little 
of it, except possibly for a short time at a par¬ 
ticular season. We have several species of 
trout, native and introduced, but for the most 
part they may be taken by the same methods 
and with the same flies. In some mountain 
brooks the food supply does not appear to be 
large, and if there is a fair stock of trout, they 
are usually hungry and may be more easily taken 
with fly or bait than where the water is well 
supplied with trout food and where many fish¬ 
ermen are found. 
If insects and their larva are plentiful and the 
trout are accustomed to look to the surface for 
a fair portion of their daily bread, then the con¬ 
ditions for successful dry fly-fishing should be 
good, but the wet fly man may do well also. In 
fact, if you are fond of the dry fly you may be 
surprised to find that an old hand with wet fly 
has quite as good a basket as you have. When 
I find that everyone on the river is fishing the 
dry fly, I think I will return to the old style, 
and get the benefit of the drop fly. The action 
of this artificial insect upon the water, when 
well handled, is often very effective, as it imi¬ 
tates somewhat crudely the actions of the 
natural fly in depositing its eggs upon the 
water and the buzzing and fluttering of some 
of the caddis flies and land insects which have 
been blown upon the stream. Trout feed upon 
the larva and nymphs when they are rising to 
the surface to hatch or change into the winged 
fly. You have often found the larva in their 
throats, on their tongues or in their stomachs. 
Dry fly-fishing is extremely fascinating. I 
have felt this so strongly at times, that I have 
continued to dry and float one small fly when 
it was too dark to see the fly or the rise of the 
trout. But if we rely entirely upon the artificial fly 
for our sport, we had best practice both methods 
and thus be enabled to judge when and where to 
use the dry or the wet fly most successfully. 
Of course, if one fishes fly, worms, minnows 
and other baits, he is not able to become en¬ 
thused with the dry fly. I remember when a 
boy fishing an unfortunate stream in Northern 
New York in this way: First, fly; second, grass¬ 
hopper; third, worm. This was murderous, but 
the stream had been fished out and netted to 
stock a hatchery. I think I will stick to the 
fly now and fish it as I feel inclined. There H 
no other sport that takes quite the same grip 
upon a man. It is a sort of tender passion that 
grows in strength as long as vfc live. 
OUTLINES OF MR. TODD’s BAITS, ILLUSTRATED IN FIGS. 1-6. 
