On the first day of the season the angler is seized with a madness to wade and cast—and catch a trout 
sh, and my friend the game warden 
id not extract my promise to fish this 
Bream for the sake of one lone brown 
[■out—no matter if he did weigh over 
pound—the fish I mean. So I got 
ack onto the ledge, saw that the line 
assed under my fingers this time, and 
ast over the same spot as before. Re¬ 
lit, after considerable jockeying, an¬ 
ther fine big brown trout. To be done 
: ith this tale, I caught five more big 
sh in exactly the same place, just 
bout as fast as I could handle them. 
STARTED to tell of this experience 
as an example of an unsatisfactory 
pening day, and you may think I am 
1 little balmy; but in spite of the good 
: m I had with the fish, there is always 
j le knowledge that they were planted 
i that bend by my friend the game war- 
: en, probably not more than twenty- 
pur hours before I caught them. Two 
ears before that I had what I look 
ack on as a thoroughly satisfactory 
pening day; I returned with two trout 
■ r hich did not weigh more than half a 
ound together, but I found them miles 
part, and I took them on a dry fly the 
rst day of April. In addition to that 
iey were wild fish, who had never 
ven heard of friendly game wardens. 
1 lardly a year goes by but what at least 
ne trout finds his way to my creel via 
j ae dry fly. 
If you take the trouble to go out on 
* be trout streams on the warm days in 
late February you will be delighted and 
probably somewhat surprised to see a 
fe\v fish rising toward the middle of the 
day; in March they will be rising more 
freely if the day is sunny and you will 
very likely see a few odd flies on the 
water. Last spring I remember watch¬ 
ing the fish rise to a little hatch of 
March Browns two weeks before the 
season opened. And so, if the sun is 
shining on April first and you are on 
the watch for flies, there is no reason 
why you cannot have the satisfaction of 
taking a fish or two on a dry fly. I have 
found that a March Brown, tied with 
plenty of English partridge hackle, is 
the best fly for these first early rises. 
Do not make the mistake of using too 
large a fly at this time; twelve is about 
right. The Stone Fly is also worth try¬ 
ing. If you are eating your lunch at 
noon-time you will very likely miss the 
rise, and no matter how hard you fish 
the rest of the day, the chances are 
greatly against your doing much with a 
floating fly. 
In spite of the worm fisher’s insistence 
that his method is the only sensible one 
for the early season, I have never yet 
failed to take my share on April first 
with flies; in fact, there has only been 
one year when I met a bait fisherman 
who had more trout than I had. Which 
is not quoted to prove what a devil of a 
fisherman I am, but merely in defense 
of the fly. I might add that I don’t 
rush up and down the stream hunting 
for bait fishermen with whom to com¬ 
pare baskets; my record might be 
spoiled! There is nothing unnatural 
about being able to take trout on flies 
early in the season; in fact, they are 
easier to take at that time of year than 
they are in June. They have hardly 
eaten a thing since the previous fall; 
at least they have not had a good square 
meal in that time and they arc extremely 
busy hunting for something with which 
to relieve the winter hunger. Why 
they should turn up their noses at a 
well-presented fly is more than I can 
understand. And they don't. If the 
water is high—as it ordinarily is—and 
inclined to be claret, or even porter- 
colored (descriptive words now obsolete 
in this fair land of thirst)—one must 
remember to handle the flies in such a 
way that the fish may have every op¬ 
portunity of seeing them. In other 
words, instead of allowing the current 
to carry them down with a rush, it is 
well to check their speed somewhat, let¬ 
ting them play around a rock, or glance 
back and forth across a productive-look¬ 
ing riffle a bit longer than one would if 
the water were normally clear and 
lower. Experience has shown that a 
Coachman is by far the most visible fly 
to a trout under the conditions; at least 
it is the most taking pattern in cloudy 
water. I mentioned above that the fish 
will hug the bank in the spring floods 
and by that I mean they will literally 
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