Vol. XCIV No. 5 

May - 1924 
Dry Fly on the Sourdnahunk 
Notes on Trout Stream Entomology 
AST June and July during seven 
IC delightful weeks at York’s Camp 
on Daicey pond in the Sourdna- 
hunk (“Sourdyhunk’’) country, so ex- 
tensively fished, but still as prolific in 
fontinalis as ever, where all the waters, 
except the stream itself, are ciosed to 
bait fishing, and where brook trout, 
and nothing but brook trout are found, 
I had unusual opportunity to test the 
efficacy of the dry-fly and to observe 
and collect specimens of the aquatic in- 
sects, the profusion of which make that 
rough, rugged and primeval country a 
veritable angler’s paradise. 
Fly? Oh, yes, lots of fly, and this 
will interest the dry-fly man because 
usually he does not operate unless there 
is fly on the water,—fly with jaw- 
breaking polysyllabic names, 
wonderfully beautiful under the 
glass and so delicately formed 
and colored as to be the despair 
of any fly-tyer except one of the 
impressionist school. I collected 
27 specimens, but, alas! the 
formalin, although only a 2% 
solution, bleached, in fact, 
blanched, some of them and the 
severe shaking to which my 
specimen case was_ subjected 
over the nine miles of the Sourdna- 
hunk Tote road in the buckboard go- 
ing out, did for others, so that satis- 
factory identification was quite im- 
possible. 
HE rest, more stockily built and 
more coarsely colored, were identi- 
fied. Their . names? The printer 
hasn’t enough type to set them up! 
Suffice it to say that the list of dry- 
flies I gave in the 1923 edition of “In 
the Maine Woods,” Bangor & Aroos- 
took R. R. publisher, is quite sufficient 
for all needs,—except, add the Gran- 
nom, Mills’ Little Yellow May Dun 
(not the wet “Yellow May” with brilli- 
ant yellow wings), Mills’ Hackle- 
Point-Winged Spent Gnat, and the 
Gray Hackle, dry. 
Hatches? Two of them, most re- 
Page 261 
By GEORGE K. WOODWORTH 
markable, real hatches, where myriads 
of duns popped out of the water and 
the trout went wild over them. Plenty 
of other hatches on a small scale, and 
also a fall of white spinners, a fall of 
“erannom” and a fall of large black 
ants, during each of which the trout 
rose mightily. Many other falls of 
course on a small scale, because for 
every hatch there must necessarily be 
a fall. 
The first veal hatch I saw was one 
of Olive Duns on Kidney Pond during 
the last week of June. It exceeded any- 





Windy Pitch Falls, Sourdnahunk Stream 
thing I had ever experienced, and I 
have had the good fortune to be in 
quite a few hatches. I call them the 
“Olive Dun,” because they were so 
designated by one of Maurice’s guests, 
a gentleman from Scotland who had 
fished the British Isles from the Ork- 
neys to Hampshire, and was _ conse- 
quently quite familiar with this fly 
which plays so prominent a part in 
angling on the English streams. I un- 
derstand the English Olive Dun (Bae- 
tis rhodani or B. vernus) does not in- 
habit this country, and the specimen 
that I so carefully garnered was one 
of the flies which the preservative 
whitened. Olive Dun or no, it was a 
dun (order, Ephemerida), had an 
olive body, ringed light olive, olive legs, 
and dun wings, and was about No. 13 
(No. 2, N. S.) in size. 
\ HEN this fly was on the water 
one cloudy morning, the end of 
Kidney Pond near York’s Landing was 
a sight to behold. I never knew there 
were so many trout in the world, much 
less in Kidney Pond. Anything that 
was olive and small and floated, was 
taken the second it touched the water. 
I used Halford’s Olive Dun, Dark 
Olive Dun, Iron Blue Dun and Blue 
Winged Dun, indifferently, also various 
kinds of Olive Quills and the Blue Up- 
right. Almost invariably the 
Kidney Pond trout on taking a 
floating fly, natural or artificial, 
would catapult themselves clear 
out of the water, apparently 
darting for the fly at high speed, 
sucking it in by a swift intake of 
water which, of course, passed 
out through the gills, and then 
leaping by virtue of their ac- 
quired momentum. It was _ not 
so, however, with the big trout of 
Daicey Pond when the Mayfly were on. 
During this two-hour hatch of Olive 
Duns, I could easily have filled my 
canoe with half- to three-quarter-pound 
trout. Actually, I brought back seven. 
Others were fishing that day and there 
is a limit to the number of trout a man, 
even with the Maine-woods appetite, 
can eat. 
[* may be food for reflection for the ~ 
“formalists” and possibly add a bit 
to the ammunition of the ‘“colorists” 
when I say I tried some half dozen flies 
differently colored from the olives 
above-mentioned, but of about the same 
shape and size (12’s, 13’s or 14’s), and 
got not a single rise. This and the in- 
cident which follows show that when 
trout are feeding on a special food, as 
during a hatch of a certain fly, they 
