412 
FOREST AND S T R E A M 
July, 1918 
WHY’S AND HOW’S OF DRY 
PART FOUR CONTAINS ADVICE AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT 
A NATURAL MANNER OVER A FEEDING TROUT WITHOUT 
By R. L. M. (CALIFORNIA) 
I T is very exciting to hook a big trout 
on a fly, but the excitement should not 
cause one to forget that one only has 
a very slender, fragile connection with that 
fish, and also to always remember that the 
harder you pull on the trout, the more he 
will pull. By keeping down and holding 
lightly a big fish can be coaxed out of the 
most impossible strongholds into more open 
water, whereas if a heavy strain is put on 
at once, the trout takes the bit in his teeth 
and bolts for his favorite hiding place, 
which is frequently underneath a rough, 
jagged rock or a nest of willow roots. 
If he gets into the willow roots it is a 
foregone conclusion that he will be lost 
unless the unexpected happens, but if he 
goes under a rock all is not lost; there is 
still a chance of landing him. The thing 
to do the moment one feels that the leader 
is chafing against a rock, is to slack off en¬ 
tirely. In all probability the fish will come 
out from his hiding place in a minute or 
so, because feeling no more strain he im¬ 
agines that he is free. 
If the hook is over the barb and holding 
well, do not reapply the strain as soon as 
the fish comes out, because if you do the 
fish will bolt back again, but wait until the 
fish has moved away a bit from the danger 
spot, and then if well down stream of the 
fish, begin to apply a gentle strain; the 
further you can coax him away from his 
stronghold the better it will be. If you 
have luck you will be able to get the fish 
twenty yards or more away, then you can 
begin to make him keep moving and thus 
tire him out and land him finally. 
/>£. //. 
But the remedy of taking off all the 
strain when he is under the rock is a 
rather heroic remedy, because if the fish is 
not well hooked the hook is liable to come 
out and you will lose the fish; but it is the 
only remedy there is for this particular set 
of unfortunate conditions. 
D L. M. (California), the author 
of this article, is one of the 
best known authorities on dry fly 
fishing in the United States. He has 
been a devotee of the art for over 
thirty years and has either person¬ 
ally met or been in correspondence 
with most of the acknowledged lead¬ 
ers of the British school of dry fly 
men, although the greater part of his 
fishing has been done in this coun¬ 
try. He is therefore well able to 
instruct both the novice and those of 
some experience in the art of cast¬ 
ing the dry fly. The April Forest 
and Stream contained the first paper 
of the series, which will be concluded 
in the August issue. [Editors.] 
Oftentimes a hooked fish will bolt into 
a bed of weeds; in this case the best thing 
to do is to stick the rod into the ground 
and take the line in the hands and by gen¬ 
tle pulls “handline” the fish out of the 
weeds and then resume the rod, and finish 
playing and land the fish. The reason a 
fish escapes so easily when he bolts into a 
mass of willow roots is that he either 
wraps the leader round a root and breaks 
loose or else he manages to get the hook 
caught onto a root and then he frees him¬ 
self in a few moments. 
W HEN fishing, even if able to throw a 
very long line, never throw a foot 
further than is absolutely neces¬ 
sary; keep down and get closer to the fish. 
A cast of 80 feet is a very long cast to fish 
successfully, because if a fish rises and you 
do not hook him well, he is very liable to 
get off owing to the line becoming slack 
for a moment. If you have 80 feet of line 
out and a fish rises at the time when your 
rod was at a flat angle of only 20° with 
the horizontal, straightening the rod will 
only pull in the fly 6 feet towards you, 
provided the line lay in a mathematically 
straight line between the tip of the rod 
and the fly. But in practice the line will 
never be straight, therefore when casting 
a long line it will be necessary to reel in 
quickly as well as to straighten the rod; 
even so the fish has a very good chance 
to escape. 
Eighty feet may seem a very short dis¬ 
tance when compared with the distances 
cast at fly-casting tournaments, but the 
style of casting seen at these exhibitions 
is distinctly not the style used in dry fly 
fishing. A special rod is required for tour¬ 
nament casting, one that is rather too stiff 
for pleasant fishing. The tip is not as 
fine as it should be for use with fine gut 
leaders, and the weight will be in the neigh¬ 
borhood of io or ii oz. 
At Fig. ii I have shown a sketch map of 
part of a stream; the arrows show the di¬ 
rection and speed of the surface currents, 
a long arrow signifying faster water than 
FLY FISHING 
CASTING THE FLY IN 
ALARMING THE FISH 
a short arrow; and the place where the 
trout is rising is shown as an oval. 
The angler is supposed to be on the 
right hand bank and he will notice that the 
water runs a good deal faster in the mid¬ 
dle of the stream than in that part of it 
where the trout is feeding. In order to 
place the fly above the feeding fish and 
ensure it floating down without any “drag,” 
it will be necessary to make a horizontal 
cast, moving the rod to the left; in other 
words, a “back hand” cast. When the fly 
falls on the water the line instead of be¬ 
ing in a straight line between the end of 
the rod and the fly, should fall on the 
water with an up stream curve to it, as 
shown in the sketch. 
It is rather difficult to explain just how 
this is done, but the best explanation I can 
give is to say that sufficient power is not 
given in the forward cast to make the line 
fall straight; there is to a certain extent 
a slight slackening of the effort just to¬ 
wards the end of the forward motion of 
the rod when making the cast. 
. /Z. 
When the line falls in the curve, the fast 
current in the middle of the stream will 
not cause the fly which is floating on the 
slower moving water to drag until the 
action of the current has made the line 
assume a curve in the opposite direction of 
equal camber to the original curve. The 
dotted line shows the approximate position 
when drag can be expected. The fly in 
the meantime has floated over the fish in 
a perfectly natural manner. 
I N Fig. 12 conditions are reversed, the 
swift water is where the trout is feeding 
and the slacker water is between the 
fish and the bank. I have illustrated a 
particular place I am very familiar with 
and shown the position in which my line 
falls on the water. 
The fly passes over this fish in a natural 
manner and possibly goes six feet or more 
before the drag of the water on the line 
is felt, it can then be lifted and the cast 
repeated. In this case a horizontal cast 
is made moving the rod to the right; the 
line is made to fall in the abrupt bend by 
