FOREST an STREAM 
Vol. XCV No. 5 

May - 1925 
Why the Dry FlyP 
A Champion of the Dry Fly Points Out the Advantages of 
the Surface Method. You May Not Agree With All He Has 
to Say, But We Believe You’ll Find the Article Interesting 
nahunk (“Sourdyhunk’’) coun- 
try at one of Maurice York’s 
outlying camps, I was forced by hunger 
and the prospect of a troutless pork 
dinner to use a wet fly on a dry-fly 
leader—a wet fly because the white- 
capped waves would have swamped a 
dry fly, and a dry-fly leader because I 
had nothing else in my cast case. I got 
enough trout for my dinner and was 
trying to get some for the other fel- 
low’s dinner when a back cast against 
an unexpected submerged trout proved 
too much for a nine foot 2-x Hardy 
leader. 
_ That was the first time I ever used a 
‘wet fly on a dry-fly leader, but it was 
not the first time that I found, on 
starting the back-cast, that there was 
_a trout on one of my wet flies. A wet- 
fly leader will usually stand five pounds 
dead weight and can’t be broken by re- 
covering against an unsuspected sub- 
merged fish. In fact, in my wet-fly 
days I have thrown a respectable sized 
‘trout clear over the canoe on the back 
cast. Who hasn’t? Striking is wholly 
a matter of chance. You see a whirl 
near your fly as you skitter it over the 
water “to imitate the movement of an 
insect” (!) and strike, sometimes too 
‘soon, often too late. It is all hit or miss, 
for you cannot possibly see your fish, 
and, by the way, did you ever notice 
how slowly an insect moves over the 
water (except the scuttling sedge) as 
compared with the rate of travel of 
your wet fly when you are fishing or 
skittering it? 
O NCE last summer in the Sourd- 
-|°HE dry-fly man, however, sees his 
trout taking his fly on the surface 
and knows just when to “strike” or 
rather, set the hook, for “striking,” as 
Mr. Halford says, implies violence 
which is just what the dry-fly man must 
avoid unless he wishes to snap his deli- 
j 
BY GEORGE K. WOODWORTH 

“Big Niagara,’ Sourdnahunk Stream. 
cate leader or tear his minute hook out 
of the trout’s mouth. Then consider 
dappling the dropper fly so that it 
dances just over the surface of the 
water, which hardly ever fails to pro- 
duce a rise; but what the wet-fly man 
does very awkwardly and for but a few 
seconds per cast, the dry-fly man ac- 
complishes delicately and with precision 
and keeps up for several minutes if his 
cast is long enough and his fly is a 
good floater. 
Wet fly fishing is essentially bait fish- 
ing, for the fly, silvered, tinseled, bright, 
gaudy, white, black or multi-colored, is 
drawn through the water just below 
the surface to produce in the mind of 
the trout the impression that it is a 
small fish or nymph or something that 
lives in the water and certainly not the 
: Contents Copyrighted by Forest and Stream Pub, Co, 
impression that it is a fly which the 
trout must surely know is a creature 
of the surface. 
LMOST all the choice waters like 
those of the Sourdnahunk country, 
which are closed to bait fishing, are 
closed also to trolling and spinning, but 
why, may I ask, is not wet-fly fishing 
precisely the same in principle as spin- 
ning? The trolling spoon rapidly spin- 
ning as it is drawn through the water 
produces a shimmering luminous ef- 
fect, when viewed from below, like a 
darting shiner, and undoubtedly is 
taken as such by the trout. Can there 
be the slightest doubt that a Silver 
Doctor, or a Lester, or a Silver Mont- 
treal is taken for the same reason? 
I have repeatedly tried to determine 
the relative effectiveness of the innum- 
erable wet-fly patterns, but have failed 
utterly to perceive the slightest differ- 
ence between their killing qualities, 
except possibly that dark flies are taken 
better on bright days, and light flies 
on dark days. I recall in this connec- 
tion a day on Foss and Knowlton Pond 
two years ago when I tried such un- 
usual flies as the Marble, the Flagon, 
the Hamlin, the Prouty, the Brandreth, 
the Lester, the Lord Baltimore and the 
Parmachenee Beau, together with the 
more common patterns, and found that 
the trout showed no preference what- 
ever. Did you ever have a trout take 
your wet fly the instant it struck the 
water? Is it not the invariable rule 
that it is not taken until fished? And 
yet it a common experience with the 
dry-fly man to have a trout jump for 
his fly the instant it alights on the 
surface. 
a, €4- often see a trout jump over a 
wet-fly which is stationary on the 
water. He sees it alight, darts for it, 
thinking it is a fly, sees that it isn’t as 
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