The Flies Shown Here Are a Selection of the Best to Be Used During the 
Month of May—Which to Fish Wet and Which Dry Is Told in the Article. 
Dry, Wet, or Nature Fly—Which Shall we Offer? 
This Author Holds That the Most Alluring is That Which Most Truly Copies the Insect Visible to the 
Feeding Fish 
ffTT AIL, smiling May! Queen of the year, 
; *| robed in bright emerald, spangled 
with garlands of blossoms and flow¬ 
ers. She chants her joys in wide-spread melody! 
and charms the light heart of the angler. Myri¬ 
ads of flies flock the air: the prynant waters 
teem with life; and the tyrant trout, night and 
day, revels and fattens in carnage.” 
So wrote that fine old British angler, Michael 
Theakston, nearly one hundred years ago, and 
we anglers of to-day in America likewise salute 
the happy month to once more cast our flies to 
tempt the speckled beauty as best we may in the 
highest and most sportsmanlike method. The 
whirligig of time has wrought great changes in 
trout fishing this last few years. Twelve years 
ago I was sure I could kill more trout with a 
little kicking brantling worm on a very small No. 
12 hook attached to a long nine foot tapered 
gut than I could on the best favorite commercial 
fly. Just then anglers were discarding our gaudy 
large size domestic patterns for the tiny imported 
gnats, duns and spinners of somber hue. After¬ 
wards came with a mighty rush a call for the 
British dry-fly (only used with any marked suc¬ 
cess on a few placid, deep streams in the South 
of England. 
The craze grew to extraordinary proportions! 
Our tackle dealers were sold out in a jiffy. Ex¬ 
pert and tyro vied with each other in talking, 
talking dry-fly in the city, while on the stream 
they fished wet-fly, because the rapid, rippling 
waters drowned them. 
The wise and witty Henry Van Dyke puts the 
thing in a nutshell when he says: 
“The natural fly is dry, no doubt, 
While through the air he flits about, 
But, lighting on the streams you bet 
He very often gets quite wet.” 
A ludicrous climax came to settle the matter 
for all time by a rather sporty monthly that 
claimed they alone introduced to America this 
high-art angling method, which had come to 
By Louis Rhead. 
stay, as the end of all effort. However, to get 
back to the realms of common sense, we quote 
Van Dyke again, who says: 
“The honest angler should not be 
A man of rigid theory, 
But use the most alluring fly, 
And sometimes wet, and sometimes dry.” 
No matter what the so-called expert says, or 
what the Britisher does, the sensible angler is 
well assured the most alluring fly to capture 
trout, big or little, is to use a fly copied, or (as 
near as possible) like, the insect upon which 
trout are then feeding; also that the angler pre¬ 
sents such a fly precisely in the manner that the 
natural insect is being taken by the trout. It 
matters not if the flat-winged dun floats along 
submerged, or that the cock-wing drake floats 
along at the surface, one or the other, perhaps 
both, may be the “alluring fly.” 
But you cannot fish both wet and dry at the 
same time; it must be one or the other. In addi¬ 
tion to that, much depends upon the water’s sur¬ 
face, for rapid, tumbling water drowns your 
floater, as well as hides it from the trout. Wet 
flies underneath choppy water are more easily 
observed by the fish—the same is true of a dry 
fly floating on placid surface. 
An interesting incident occurred (among many 
similar) during my last season’s fishing with 
“nature flies” that gave ample proof of what 
was the most alluring fly. I was fishing down 
stream with a single fly (brown drake, then on 
the wing in great numbers). Another angler 
coming up stream was fishing dry fly. We both 
arrived about the same time at a good pool. For 
a while I watched the stranger who cast his fly 
very well indeed, but mostly in quiet water. A 
swift runway pushed itself along the middle of 
the pool where I observed trout to rise at inter¬ 
vals and paid attention to that particular spot, 
while my rival continued to cast aside from the 
rapid flow. I hooked a twelve-inch native, then 
three more somewhat smaller and proceeded 
down stream. 
The stranger hailed me: “What fly did you 
use to get them?” 
“An exact copy of the insect you may see now 
on the wing,” I replied. He used imported dry 
flies without regard to what was then on the 
wing. 
Another occasion I took along a companion, 
a good fly caster, though strange to the waters 
we fished. This time we fished up stream, both 
using the same set of “nature” flies. Early last 
June the river was both wide and full. Insects 
on the wing were both plentiful and varied, 
though not more than six per cent, floated alive 
along the surface. Trout were not rising; they 
were visibly feeding on the imperfect fly as it 
came up wriggling from the pupa state on the 
bottom. I worked three floating duns under 
water, hooking fish after fish, yet my companion’s 
surface flies had no result. Being a man of 
“rigid theory” he kept at the surface, till arriv¬ 
ing at a deep pool where fish were actually leap¬ 
ing at the surface insects, his time began, and 
I quickly changed my method to his. 
It would serve no good purpose to give other 
instances to prove further that the most allur¬ 
ing fly is that which is truly a nature lure in 
every sense, viz.: a true copy of insects visible 
to the fish and offered to it in the most natural 
manner. If the discerning angler will please 
take note of the “nature flies” here shown for 
the first time, made and tied exactly from my 
drawings of living insects by Wm. Mills & Sons, 
New York, he will observe a very decided dif¬ 
ference in the duns, drakes and spinners. I will 
also call his attention and make comparisons with 
existing American commercial patterns to find 
them entirely different and less natural in every 
respect. To go still further, and invite all 
thoughtful American anglers who have the op¬ 
portunity to examine the “hundred best patterns” 
in Halford’s “Dry Fly Entomology,” to there 
specially note his artificial imitations of the 
