June 24, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
973 
Fly Fallacies 
By J. BERRYMAN 
T HE old hand with a fly-rod, when he 
sallies forth to get fish as well as other 
enjoyments, takes with him as the best 
part of his equipment his lesson book of ex¬ 
perience. Careful glances at the road over 
which we have trodden cannot fail to help us 
in the way we are treading, though a new one. 
The old path may have been very pleasant and 
full of interest, but who would pass just that 
way again if a better can be found affording 
fresh enjoyments and new knowledge? 
Years ago a constant fishing companion and 
myself took delight in possessing and using 
every pattern of fly published, all tied by skilled 
fingers, and many sworn to loudly by their 
special devotees. It afforded us immense inter¬ 
est, many cocksure arguments, rare pastimes, a 
few charming successes and battalions of dis¬ 
appointments. 
The old pathetic looking books still exist, 
crowded with carefully assorted and wondrous 
patterns, over a hundred of them tied to gut 
long rotten and the flies and felt leaves moth 
eaten, a sad memento of faded pleasures—and 
most pleasant fallacies. When the innovation 
of eyed hooks appealed to us, the books with 
their precious accumulations were laid aside, 
cases purchased and a new collection begun. 
That collection might have gone on till now 
had not bewilderment at last provoked re¬ 
bellion. We who had been trying arduously for 
a dozen years to discover something of the 
ways of trout with flies, only found that we were 
very much at sea, that the experience of each 
contradicted itself, and the experiences of 
either contradicted the other. The more we 
studied the matter and tried to arrive at a few, 
if only a few, sure and reliable facts the more 
confusian became confounded. The only deduc¬ 
tion we could make from all our careful notes 
and experiences was that the particular pattern 
of the fly itself had very little to do with the 
number of fish we carried home. 
Then we went on a new hypothesis: that 
trout, after all, rarely take our artificials for the 
naturals we intend they should imitate. We 
were gradually convinced of it by many proots 
and experiments. Among our early investiga¬ 
tions was the tying of the most ridiculously 
unlike-nature patterns ourselves and succeed¬ 
ing with them as well as we had ever done with 
any others. This led us to make a long tank 
with a glass bottom and see for ourselves how 
various artificial patterns compared with the 
natural as seen from below, floating and sunk, 
against the sky or a tree background, and how 
they must appear to the trout. As regards the 
wet fly—motionless with its hackle extended or 
moving with it bunched to the hook shank— 
the experiment exploded many of our remain¬ 
ing notions at once. Nothing we could get or 
make resembled at all any creature that the 
water breeds. All these years we had thought, 
if we thought at all, that, going by the patterns 
of the beautifully-got-up catalogues and the 
wisdom of many writers, we had been offering 
the fish something they would recognize as of a 
tribe they knew well. We saw what complacent 
ignoramuses we had been. For the moment 1 
am alluding to the wet fly distinctively. 
The next step was to prove a theory which 
the experiment could not fail to suggest; name¬ 
ly, that the trout took our lures not for what 
we intended them to look like, but for some¬ 
thing they knew nothing about! This opened 
up a wide field for experiments, which culmi¬ 
nated in my comrade making me a challenge, 
utterly violating all traditions. Not being quite 
so ardent a revolutionist, I accepted it a little 
disdainfully. 
I.et me,” said he, ‘‘choose a fly from 'your 
case blindfolded, and I won’t change it. If I 
don t catch as many as vou, call me what you 
like.” 
“Come, ’ I said, “don't fumble all day.” He 
was feeling among a hundred or so. 
“I m not going to choose a large one, nor 
yet one with too much body. I’ve noticed the 
smaller the fly the more the fish,” he added 
sagaciously, “and numbers count to-day.” 
He was a little horrified at choosing a North 
country nondescript which I had been using on 
the shallows of Loch Awe, and now we were on 
a Somersetshire brook. I beat him by two fish 
that day, but verily believe it was only because 
I never fished with more keenness. I had 
stuck to my usual fly—a coachman, sometimes 
dry and sometimes wet, its bedraggled white 
wings often drawn or jerked against the stream. 
Where could be the resemblance to anything in 
nature ? 
On another occasion during lunch time he 
held up a fly with wings and hackle nearly all. 
worn off and said, “There! I caught my last 
on that. Bet you I 11 catch one on a bare 
hook!” 
“Done!” I said, “I'll wager you a luncheon 
basket you don’t.” In ten minutes he flipped 
out a fingerling. The bet was won—and paid. 
Since then we have both caught older and more 
wary ones on a naked hook. 
On another occasion a controversy sprung up 
between another friend and myself on this sub¬ 
ject. I stripped a Palmer, and begged him to 
tie any sort of fly he liked, or could, upon the 
hook and promised that I would use nothing 
else the whole evening. He laughlingly pulled 
a thread from his stocking and soon handed me 
an ugly bunch of knotted worsted, saying, “You 
certainly don’t mind wasting your time if you 
intend insulting them with that.” When, with 
his permission, I had sheared it a little with 
my scissors it did not frighten me nor the trout. 
We each caught two brace and a half, though 
his were the bigger fish, and he had numerous 
short rises. I experimented chiefly on the most 
“stickley” water. At all events the trout took it. 
What conclusions must be drawn? I have 
made similar experiments for years and the 
conviction has been forced upon me by such 
experiences that we do not deceive the trout, 
only ourselves; that they do not take our fanci¬ 
ful lures for the particular creatures we invite 
them to; they take it for something unknown to 
them, but something they can afford to taste 
and blow out instantly if objectionable. I do 
not believe the particular shape and coloring 
of our imitations have any special inducement or 
have much to do with their decision to seize it; 
not a tenth part so much as the way we work it. 
Movement is quite another and an all-important 
side of the art worthy of lengthy treatment, but 
our point here is pattern. 
How is it that particular patterns kill best on 
certain rivers and at certain, times? My ex¬ 
perience would justify less moderation than the 
words I am going to use. I believe it to be a 
fallacy. If a fly has a reputation it is because it 
has had a better chance by being most used and 
because being most used, therefore most killing 
because most recommended, and for that rea¬ 
son only. How it gets its reputation is not 
difficult to understand when we consider salmon 
fly history. Salmon flies are creatures of men’s 
imaginations and utterly unnatural. Some one 
ties a fly to his fancy, uses it, succeeds with it, 
and swears by it. Immediately we hear “that’s 
the fly for this water,” and we must find the 
eagle or the albatross that provides the par¬ 
ticular hackle or wing or body if we want to 
succeed. What credulity! I go to Loch Leven 
or to a Cornish stream and say, “What fly?” 
“That is the best fly here,” is the pith of all 
the answers. Sometimes I smile, sometimes I 
frown, but nearly always do I seem to half 
offend my kind adviser by putting on something 
quite opposite. It springs from a “cussedness” 
born of long learning; but the unvarying result 
is the reason my convictions are so strong. A 
good “driver” may almost choose his fly hap¬ 
hazard. Sometimes a companion says he has 
found the fly after failing with several. My 
amusement then is to use any one of those he 
has failed with previously and soon we are able 
to agree that it was not the fly but the changing 
mood of the trout, or other circumstances. 
The sum of it is this: except on chalk streams 
I never budge from one of three patterns—the 
coachman, the alder, and the blue upright. Will 
any man meet me with his case full and com¬ 
pare notes at the end of the day? 
The Complete Angler. 
“Johnnie, come in to dinner!” 
Mrs. Slater stood at the door of her cottage, 
looking toward a small boy who was fishing 
with a bent pin and a bit of thread on the brim 
of a puddle. 
“John-nie—dinner!” 
Still the boy went on fishing. 
“Johnnie!” 
No answer. 
“If you don't come into dinner at once, my 
son,” threatened Mrs. Slater, “I won’t give you 
any at all.” 
Only a sudden tension of the small boy’s 
frame as he gazed eagerly into the depths of 
the murky puddle. 
Mrs. Slater’s patience was at an end. Silently 
she crept up behind the delinquent, and then 
suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, shook 
him violently to and fro. 
“You little rascal!” she cried. “Didn't you 
hear me call?” 
“No, mother.” replied the youngster, stoutly, 
“I didn’t hear you the first three times, and the 
last time I had a bite!”,—Exchange. 
