918 
FOREST AND STREAM 
THE MILAM ^'.nSXV- 
For 76 years we have made on the 
same spot the Milam Frankfort, 
Kentucky Reel. Ask your dealer to 
show you our new German silver 
reel. Price $6.00, jeweled; $5.00, 
plain bearings. If he can’t, write us. 
Eziitblibliwl /aao 
B. C. 
Milam & Son, Frankfort, Ky. 
THE ELECTRIC ILLUMINATED SUBMARINE BAIT 
GREATEST NOVEL 
FISH-BAIT MADE 
©hr (5Imu Worm 
TRIED OUT AND 
PROOVEN GOOD 
SMALL BATTERY AND GLOBE HOUSED INSIDE 
PRICE $1.50. With Weedless Hooks and Spinners $2.00. 
epi pi . • PI • D r. 666 Forest Home Avenue. 
The Electric oubmcirine Kant to., Milwaukee, wis. 
THOMAS-- 
The Thomas hand made split bamboo fishing 
rod has been perfected to meet both the all 
around and the various special requirements 
of the modern angling sport. Made of the 
finest bamboo, light, resilient, perfectly jointed 
and balanced. In the Thomas rod the acme 
of perfection has been obtained. Send for 
our interesting booklet. 
F. E. THOMAS, 117 Exchange St., Bangor, Me. 
25c 
Postpaid 
all lubrication and' 
polishing around the 
house, in the tool shed or 
afield with gun or rod 
NYOIL 
In the New 
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is a matchless combination 
Sportsmen have known it for years. 
Dealers sell NYOIL at 10c. and 25c. 
Send us the name of a live one who 
doesn’t sell NYOIL with other neces¬ 
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you a dandy, handy new can (screw 
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ounces postpaid for 25 cents. 
WM. F, NYE, New Bedford, Mas s. J 
A PLACE 
FOR 
EVERYTHING 
Waterproof. Tackle will 
not rust or rattle in this 
box. Sold only by mail. 
Write us for full descrip¬ 
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you this box to examine 
in your own home. 
TACKLE BOX No 101 
STEVENS TANK AND TOWER CO., AUBURN, MAINE 
Fishing “Down Stream” 
The Dry Fly Purist Says Upstream, but Sometimes the Trout Can Best 
be Taken the Other Way 
Floating the fly down stream to a rising fish 
is, of course, a recognized part of dry-fly tactics, 
but it is probably more honored in theory than 
in practice. Few men as a rule will of set pur¬ 
pose drift a fly down if by any possibility they 
can get a reasonable cast to the fish from below. 
The reasons for this are not hard to discover, 
according to a correspondent of the Field. For 
one thing, it is not easy to drift a fly well, and 
it requires extreme accuracy of eye and hand 
to get it on the exact line where it will cover 
the fish properly. For another, it often happens 
that if you drift you must stake your all on one 
cast, because the chances are either that the float¬ 
ing cast or pari of it will rouse the fish’s suspi¬ 
cions after the fly has gone by, or else that in re¬ 
covering the line you make commotion enough 
near him to put him down. Further, there is the 
difficulty of allowing enough slack line for the 
fly to float down unhindered; often much more 
has to be conceded than is necessary for the 
worst up-stream drag. 
When all the objections have been added to¬ 
gether, however, it remains a fact that the plan 
of drifting is at times and places of consider¬ 
able value to the dry-fly man. It is, for instance, 
a very useful method of avoiding drag in cer¬ 
tain situations. Take the common case of a 
trout rising in slacker water close to the far 
bank. The center of the stream runs more 
swiftly, and there is more slack water close to 
the angler’s bank. It is obviously very difficult 
to cover the fish from below. The pace of the 
center current would drag the fly out of its 
course at once, unless the angler is so expert 
with rod and line that he can allow for it by a 
great deal of slack or by causing his line to fall 
in a big bow up stream. Even so he would find 
it easier to station himself opposite the fish 
rather than below it, and there the task would 
not be too easy. Calculating for a drag is a 
tricky business, and it too often happens that 
the fly begins to skid just as it reaches the fish. 
The next cast may send it down beautifully, but 
“next casts” are admittedly not the best killers. 
They may have the merit of saving the angler’s 
self-respect by showing that “he can do it after 
all,” but they seldom undo the evil wrought by a 
first bad blunder. 
The easiest way to give the fly a clear run 
over the fish is to drift it down to him, casting 
it across and down stream. There are places, 
indeed, in which the drag can only be avoided by 
doing this. It is not “drifting” perhaps in the 
strictest sense of the word, but it is something 
very like it, and if practised often it serves as 
good training for. drifting proper—that is to 
say, to a fish in mid stream or under one’s own 
bank. The nearer he is to this bank the more 
difficult is it to cover him nicely with a fair 
chance of not putting him down if he fails to 
rise. It is the trout close in that calls for so 
much accuracy in the delivery. A few inches 
too far across, or a few inches too short, and 
he is likely to be put down. 
Writers have much insisted, no doubt perfect¬ 
ly rightly, that a trout is best approached from 
behind because he lies with his head upstream. 
As a general rule this seems quite sound. Yet 
now and then most experienced anglers must 
have come upon cases where the fish have 
seemed to stand a down-stream approach better. 
It is probably something to do with the light or 
the background, but there are places on many 
fisheries where trout are fearfully shy of any¬ 
one coming along the bank upstream, and will 
nevertheless tolerate quite a close approach from 
the other direction. In such places drifting is 
certainly assurer way of getting rises than up¬ 
stream casting. 
There are other fisheries where it may an¬ 
swer, not because the fish cannot be approached 
from below, but because they have been so ap¬ 
proached hard and often by many anglers. In 
a well-flogged water the fish may either become 
extremely shy of a falling line or supremely in¬ 
different both to it and to the fly at the end of 
it. In either case they are hard to catch by or¬ 
dinary methods, and it pays to try them with 
the drift cast. The shyest or most experienced 
of trout will sometimes make a mistake about 
a fly which comes down to him “with no visible 
means of support.” But obviously for use as a 
last resource in such circumstances the drift 
cast must be employed very artistically. Ability 
to “throw a fly into a teacup” is scarcely too high 
a standard of excellence for the angler’s ambi¬ 
tion. 
Possibly, in spite of its difficulties and other 
disadvantages, drifting would be more practised 
were it not for the fact that a considerable 
number of fish risen by the plan are missed. 
This is due to overhaste in striking. It is not 
that trout or grayling cannot be hooked perfectly 
well by a drift cast. The trouble is that one’s 
hand is prone, to answer too quickly to the indi¬ 
cation of a rise. Perhaps looking down-stream 
one sees the first signs of a rise sooner than 
one would looking up. Arfyhow, the tendency 
to strike too soon is stronger then. The excel¬ 
lent rule of striking deliberately should be even 
more strictly obeyed in fishing down than in 
fishing up, and once one has accustomed oneself 
to it the proportion of fish missed becomes much 
less noticeable, and drifting seems easier and 
more remunerative. 
