FOREST AND STREAM 
221 
An Angler’s Contemplations 
Just a Quiet Isaak Walton Like Little Sermon on Things You Ought to Know, Remember and Practice 
By Ladd Plumley. 
SIDE from the use of the “dry 
fly,” and used with dry fly or 
wet, there are sure methods for 
catching trout not understood 
by our sloshy and far-bug- 
chucking friends. He who really 
desires fried trout for supper 
should enter upon his pleasant 
task as if he were sneaking a Big Horn in the 
Rockies. If necessary, he should make his 
approach to the pools upon his knees; and there 
are smaller streams near our cities where that 
devotional attitude will bring its sure reward. 
When near the margin of the water the kneeling 
angler should take advantage of every cover; a 
clump of dock is fine and so is a baby spruce. 
The long cast over a smooth pool has its place 
but never when a pool is approached from the 
bank, and some pools have to be fished from the 
bank. The fly should be dropped, not smashed 
upon the surface, and a big fish may make a 
rush of thirty feet to see what is the food that 
has fluttered downward. 
Of course, stooping and sneaking when actually 
wading a stream is not practicable. But it is profit¬ 
ably practicable to move here and there over the 
rocks with the very minimum of disturbance and 
crunching of hobnailed waders. 
In these days of educated trout no fly fisherman 
should fish down the water, even on the riffs. And 
it is in the riffs that the up-stream, silent, short¬ 
line mode will take the largest trout. There is 
a tremendous advantage in this for the “cub” 
angler. To cast a long line may take many years 
of training, but almost any one can see to it that 
his feet move silently and that his fly drops 
softly. 
There are many reasons why fishing up the 
water, against the current, is far more creelful 
than the more easy mode of traveling with the 
stream. Trout are not supposed to have eyes in 
their tails, although they sometimes act as if they 
did. And as they lie with their heads up stream 
it seems certain that they are less disturbed if 
the angler stalks them from their rear. Then- 
too, any sand or dirt dislodged by the fisherman’s 
feet drift over the water that has already been 
fished. But as most of our trout river have rocky 
bottoms there can be slight advantage in this 
particular. What really counts in the upstream 
approach is that the angler is less conspicuous 
and makes less commotion when approaching 
from below than above. 
Except for the pools, most American trout 
streams make constant and abrupt drops. And 
with some of our smaller streams there are a 
succession of little cataracts at the tail of each 
pool. Here the upstream angler has everything 
in his favor. He clambers up the watercourse, 
sometimes not lifting the half of his body above 
the next casting water. It is as if he were con¬ 
stantly on his knees along a more level waterway. 
And in fishing riffs, on our larger streams, the 
same holds true, if not in so marked a degree 
as in streams of more abrupt descent. 
But there is a far more important advantage 
in upstream fishing that, so far as I am aware, 
has not before been put in printer’s ink. This is 
that sound travels with the current of a stream 
more easily than against. We know that trout 
are very sensitive to any shock within the water, 
as well as sensitive in a less degree, perhaps, to 
disturbances on the banks. It is as if they really 
did have ears under every portion of their skins. 
It is evident, therefore, that they do hear and are 
frightened by shocks given to the bottom near 
them. And as shocks are conveyed with the cur- 
Home Practice is a Good Thing. 
rent more easily than against it, the upstream 
fisherman has this great advantage in his 
approach added to the others that have been men¬ 
tioned. 
A quiet and inconspicuous approach is what we 
of the craft of the wand are always attempting 
In some cases this is difficult, but whether diffi¬ 
cult or not this care will add immensely to our 
chances. To say that it is difficult is only an¬ 
other way of saying that our craft is a difficult 
craft. If it were not, it would not possess for us 
its magical enchantment. For myself I can say 
that a world without fly fishing would be a far 
less interesting world than it is and that if fly 
fishing were as easy as it is difficult I should seek 
another sport. 
A small spring run slips into the Beaverkill 
River near the village of Craigie Claire. Obstruct¬ 
ed by a natural dam, the brook expands into a 
long and rather deepish pool, the banks dense 
with undergrowth and the willows making arches 
overhead. The really convenient way to fish the 
place would be to let down a fly from a balloon. 
However, without a balloon the thing can be 
achieved. 
You cannot fish the water from its tail, because 
the tail is a very weedy and encumbered tail; so 
you do the sneak act from above. You slip into 
a narrow path, where the rod must be poked 
ahead of you with some nicety of precision. When 
you gain the waterside it hardly seems possible 
to drop bait. As to a fly? Well, if you descend 
into the pool without sending ahead of you those 
horrible wavelets of water we all know, you may 
be surprised. Before you take to the water, how¬ 
ever, keep on your knees and try an experiment. 
But wait without a motion for at least five 
minutes, and five minutes is a long time to keep 
in one position. The pay, however, may He large. 
When the five minutes are over, gently swing 
your rod under the branches so that the fly will 
flutter to the surface within ten feet of you. 
Almost surely there will come a curl on the water, 
as from a miniature submarine, as something 
surges out from under the opposite bank and 
rushes toward you. And you will have him on— 
a heavy brown trout. Whether you ever gloat 
over him before the admiring tennis girls at your 
boarding-house depends on several hundred 
things. But you will have proved that the sneak 
act will bring results—if it be only a snapped 
leader and a heart-breaking departed giant. 
You need not trouble yourself to wait another 
five minutes, or a century, and try again. Whether 
you made the first submarine surger your very 
own or not, that dodge will not work twice. So 
you slip into the water as gently as would a 
muskrat. And you will find that the over-hang¬ 
ing trees and the fringing brush give you a nar¬ 
row casting avenue in the middle of the placid 
waterway. Of course you will be “hung up” 
pretty frequently and you must use every kind of 
gymnastic dexterity, but if .you have any kind 
of luck, and never make even one careless slosh, 
you will pull yourself out of the upper end of 
the leaf-reflecting trail with three or four heavy¬ 
weights to your credit and perhaps a dozen or so 
smaller sleeksides. And you’ll admit that the 
fellow who has traveled from the amateur to 
taking fish under these conditions has traveled 
a good long ways. 
Our craft is a craft where silent feet are the 
feet of the fishy smelling, and a lowly demeanor 
at the waterside meets with many a finny reward. 
Those who after a quiet approach drop a snow¬ 
flake fly, be the line ever so short, will eat trout 
for breakfast and invite their friends to share. 
Upstream fishing whether with wet or dry fly, 
if the angler covers his hobnails with caps of 
mufflement and stoops humbly low at the pools 
of difficulty, brings a heavy creel at nightfall, 
with, it maybe, from the sloshers of carelessness: 
“Well, old boy, you surely did rake ’em. Now 
somehow I didn’t hit the right fly all day!" 
