April 13, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
469 
ized hunts. Some of the hunters, however, are 
doubtless actuated by the hope that a specimen 
of the rare black fox will fall to their share. 
One of these animals taken last week in Tippe¬ 
canoe township brought its fortunate captor $150. 
But what, we ask, were the total results of 
all this effort by 2,000 men. On this point the 
dispatch is silent. 
Where are the Wardens? 
Bohemia, Pike Co., Pa., April 6. — -Editor Forest 
and Stream: The ice is soft in the lakes and will 
soon be gone. Ruffed grouse are not numerous, 
but we saw a number; also heard someone shoot¬ 
ing around Big Tink Pond. We saw where he 
had shot a bird at root of tree and the feathers 
of the grouse where the pothunter had picked 
them as he sat on a log. 
The shooting continued all week up to date, 
but we did not see the hunter, although we cut 
his trail several times. 
Porcupines have entered this section within 
the last three years. The natives never saw 
them before and did not know what sort of 
“varmints” had invaded the woods. 
Spades. 
New Publications. 
Partridges and Partridge Manors, by Aymer 
Maxwell. Cloth, 327 pages, 16 illustrations 
in colors by George Rankin, $2 net. New 
York, the Macmillan Company. 
In taking issue with those who claim that too 
much of the land in Great Britain is withheld 
from the people by the wealthy class who enjoy 
shooting. Captain Maxwell declares that par¬ 
tridge shooting is a valuable by-product of suc¬ 
cessful agriculture, to the operation of which it 
is in no sense inimical. Chapters are devoted to 
the natural history of birds, the history of par¬ 
tridge shooting, preservation and management, 
notes, opinions and suggestions, vermin, etc. 
The colored plates are beautiful. 
The Dog Lovers’ Book, by Edwin Noble, R.B.A. 
Cloth, 304 pages, numerous full page color 
plates by the author, $4.50 net. Boston, 
Dana, Estes & Co. 
The book is divided into four main parts, deal¬ 
ing with watch dogs and guardians, sporting 
dogs, lapdogs and pets, wild dogs and their kins¬ 
men, with a section of general information on 
training, common ailments, shows and dog law. 
The whole is beautifully illustrated in colors, 
with a diagram of the comparative sizes of dogs 
and smaller illustrations in black and white in 
addition. 
The Life of a Foxhound, by John Mills. Cloth, 
quarto, illustrated with color plates and mar¬ 
ginal sketches by F. A. Shepherd. New York, 
George H. Doran Company. 
Unlike some of the animal stories, in which 
the animals themselves are supposed to do the 
talking, this suppositious story by a foxhound of 
his own life and hunting is neither ridiculous 
nor Improbable, for it furnishes a peg on which 
to hang some excellent dog and hunting lore 
which every foxhunter can read with profit. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply yoti regularly. 
Dry-Fly Fishing. 
Sullivan County, N. Y., April 6. — Editor 
Forest and Stream: Whatever may be our ideas 
in regard to the English dry-fly purist who re¬ 
fuses to cast his fly, except it be to a trout 
which he has seen rising at a natural insect, it 
must be confessed that it is far more interest¬ 
ing to fish the dry-fly when the trout are actu¬ 
ally feeding upon surface food. 
Before the great freshets in the spring and 
the long drouths in summer, which have been 
so common in recent years, there were many 
places on our well known trout streams where 
a few fish could always be found “on the rise.” 
It was at one of these spots near the upper end 
of a large pool that I began my dry-fly fishing 
twenty years ago. I had the equipment which I be¬ 
lieved to be the correct thing in rod and tackle, 
with the finest gossamer gut and small dry-flies 
imported from England and tied by an expert. 
The trout were rising all right; the trouble 
was that a strong current flowed between me 
and the bay or eddy where the trout were, and 
this grabbed the belly of my line and caused 
a drag, one of the chief things I had been 
warned against. However, in the course of an 
hour or two I got ten rises at my fly and caught 
one ten-inch trout. The gossamer gut was not 
necessary, and caused much trouble. You will 
not find such fine stuff on sale in this country, 
and I understand that it is no longer popular 
in England, even on the clearest of chalk 
streams. It is too easy to break on the strike; 
the least excess in force and the fly is left in 
the mouth of the trout. Also, it twists easily 
with split-winged flies, and soon loses its 
strength. I confess that it endures a steady 
strain remarkably well, considering the fact 
that it is nearly as fine as a lovely woman’s hajr. 
One ridiculous experience is a warning 
against carelessness in fishing. I had seen a 
very large trout in a pool and went to fish for 
him. I had tried everything I could think of 
to induce this fish to rise without response, al¬ 
though I had caught two smaller trout. My 
• last efforts had been with tiny duns and this 
gossamer gut, and had given it up, when I 
noticed, in my box, a very large fly tied on a 
Pennell hook by myself. Without thought, I 
tied this fine gut into the large eye of the hook 
and cast it over the water where the fish usually 
lay. The big fly cocked and floated beautifully. 
The trout saw it and was probably enraged at 
such an apparition on his. pool. Anyhow, he 
leaped upon that fly like a tiger. It was not a 
rise in the ordinary sense, but a pounce. Of 
course, the thin gut attached to a big metal eye 
would not endure such a sudden pull, and I was 
left lamenting. 
Dry-fly fishing comes easily to anyone who 
has been in the habit of casting up stream with 
small flies, and the first man who uses a floating 
fly upon a stream where the trout have never 
seen an artificial fly fished in that way, has a 
great advantage. They soon become more wary 
and one may succeed better by returning to the 
wet-fly. The first time the floating fly was put 
over a certain piece of water, eleven large trout 
were killed. The next occasion when they were 
rising freely, seven similar fish were taken, but 
after that one was doing well if he got three 
trout with the dry-fly. Some little knowledge 
of the class of flies most common upon the 
stream, and their colors, may be of assistance, 
and typical flies are best when no one fly is 
strong upon the water. That is, if ephemera in the 
dun stage are fairly numerous but several sorts 
and sizes, then a dun of grayish or bluish dun 
color, possibly a little yellow added to the 
body, will do best. If a lot of oddlings of the 
caddis tribe are about, then one of the browner 
floating flies, what our English brethern call 
sedges. On a stream where there are plenty 
of flies the trout sometimes get the color of a 
particular fly in their mind’s eye and will not 
notice anything else. This affords an oppor¬ 
tunity for the dry-fly man to see what he can 
do, and if he succeeds he will feel pleased with 
himself. 
We used to have many such days in May and 
June, sometimes later in the summer, but in¬ 
sects are nothing like as plentiful as they were 
a few years ago. Floods and drouths are, I 
think, responsible for this decrease. In many 
parts the bed of the stream has been cut out 
and carried away. I wish that it was possible 
to restore the conditions of twenty years ago, 
but, of course, it is not. I can remember 
great rises of flies as late as midsummer, and 
after a short period of heat, the insects became 
quite numerous again by the 15th of August. 
Unless one keeps a diary, he is apt to forget 
many of his observations, but occasional days 
are marked by some special incident. In fish¬ 
ing with a first-rate angler from Pennsylvania 
there are two days that stand out clearly in 
memory, both in July. On the first of these days 
there was an extraordinary rise of a small yel¬ 
lowish-brown caddis fly, and the trout were tak¬ 
ing them freely. I took twenty fish from one 
large pool. On the second occasion a small 
blue-gray ephemera was hatching, floating down 
and rising from the water, and the dimples 
made by the rising trout were to be seen every¬ 
where. Our two baskets contained seventy 
trout, of which my companion had thirty-six 
and myself thirty-four. These fish were taken 
with wet-flies in less than four hours. In 1892 
and 1893 the fishing, I understand, was very 
poor on several of the well known streams, but 
in 1894 it was good, as the brown trout began 
to appear in some numbers and of considerable 
size. 
If we could restore a more regular flow of 
water and keep the temperature down, there 
would be no great difficulty in having as many 
native trout in our streams as they held at 
any time since the country has been settled, 
but I doubt if there is the old-time abundant 
stock of food for them. Minnows are still 
plentiful, but insects and their larvae are far less 
numerous than they were a few years ago. This 
is particularly true of the larger sorts. How¬ 
ever, there are days, or parts of days, when 
there is a fine show of insect life. 
