he approaches it—ocu- 
lists tell us that a trout’s 
eye is so formed that he 
is very near-sighted— 
and carefully avoids it 
by jumping over it if he 
is traveling so fast that 
he can’t avoid it by turn- 
ing and _  diving—sixty 
miles an hour is the ob- 
served speed of a dart- 
ing trout; but when he 
jumps in the case of a 
dry fly he has the fly in 
his mouth. A wet fly 
must be moved rapidly 
through the water to pro- 
duce the iridescent effect 
of a shiner, but a dry fly, 
being an imitation of a 
natural fly, will serve its 
purpose even when quite 
motionless or when movy- 
ing very, very slowly 
down a stream or over 
the surface of a lake. 
Here is an experience 
with dry-fly which for interest and ex- 
citement beats any wet-fly game I ever 
played: 
OST POND is the trick pond of the 
Sourdnahunk. Whenever anyone 
gets particularly cocky over his pisca- 
torial ability, Maurice always sends 
him to Lost Pond. He usually returns 
skunked, although unbelievable catches 
of large trout are made every year on 
that delightful little spring-fed pond, 
which outlets into Katahdin Brook, the 
clearest and coldest of any Sourdna- 
hunk pond with the exception of Daicey. 
Before Freddy Hyde established his 
camp on Lost, I always stopped off 
on my way back from Foss and Knowle- 
ton for a try at the Lost trout, casting 
as a matter of form, merely, over the 
big spring hole by the stunted maple 
tree where the big trout lie and then 
going to the little spring hole in the 
cove at the upper end where the water 
is very cold and very shallow and where 
the trout are always rising. But as 
long as Mr. Hyde’s party were camp- 
ing on Lost I kept away, for no sooner 
did the trout learn that that redoubt- 
able angler was living on their pond 
than they became panic stricken and 
with one accord rushed for the outlet 
and sought refuge in Katahdin Brook, 
more especially as they knew that Mrs. 
Hyde, who casts 
the wickedest fly 
in seven states, 
was along. 
The day “in 
question was 
rather warm and 
even Foss and 
Knowlton Pond, 

260 

Quick water at the head of Hyde’s Pool, Sourdnahunk Stream. The deep quiet stretch is an ideal _ 
spot for the dry fly. 
which unworthily perpetuates. the 
names of two lumbermen who did their 
best to spoil the beauty of the pond by 
their operations many years ago, was 
not up to its standard. The surface of 
the little spring hole at Lost was quite 
unruffled. It was the first time I had 
ever seen it without pleasant-looking 
ripples made by _ soul-satisfying 
splashes. There wasn’t the slightest 
sign of fly on the water. I cast small 
dry flies on long delicate tapered leaders 
over all parts of the cove—fifty and 
sixty foot casts, for they have to be 
long as the water is so clear and shal- 
low—but got no response, although the 
flies came down as lightly as anyone 
could wish. Skunked at the little spring 
hole for the first time! 
ND then I remembered what a fish- 
ing friend had told me about an 
“artificial hatch” he said he once cre- 
ated. It seemed to me at the time I 
had read about something of the sort 
in some sportsman’s magazine or some- 
where, but I listened in a seemly man- 
ner, as becomes every true angler when 
regaled with a fish story, and made no 
caustic comment. As he told the story, 
there came to mind a couplet I read 
some years before deeply graven with 
a pen-knife by some piscatorial cynic 
on the cook house of Hen McKenney’s 
delightful outlying camp on Lang Pond 
in the Parlin country: 
“This problem to solve 
I sincerely do wish, 
Does fishing make liars 
Or do only liars fish?” 
a sentiment which had crystallized 
when Dame Julianna Berners wrote the 
first English book on fly fishing about 
the time of Chaucer. Even Mr. Hal- 
ford, in his Dry-Fly Man’s Complete 
Handbook, cautions the angler not to 
deceive himself (much less others) 
when weighing his cast. Many fish 
stories I have heard have recalled that 
couplet. 
T occurred to me when I read in “The 
Way of a Trout with a Fly” by the 
interesting but misguided G. E. M. 
Skues, who advocates fishing with 
nymphs and other sunken wet-flies, that 
he could tell when the trout were tak- 
ing blue-winged olives and when olive 
duns by the double or kidney-shaped 
whirl they made in the former case. 
The day was warm, it was nearly 
supper time and I was two miles from 
camp; and making an artificial hatch, 
according to my friend’s recipe, was 
strenuous work; but I didn’t like the 
idea of being skunked at the Lost spring 
hole, so I tied on a J. J. Hardy “Vari- 
ation Baigent’s Brown,” No. 14, which 
resembles many flies generically and 
none specifically, and started in. Dr. 
Baigent’s eleven new patterns and Mr. 
J. J. Hardy’s twelve, with their long 
shiny iridescent hackles of matured 
English gamecock feathers, are well 
worth investigating, by the way. I had 
great fun with all twenty-three pat- 
terns last summer. I shot out forty 
feet of tapered D line, to which was 
tied a nine foot tapered leader and, as 
soon as the fly alighted, instantly made 
the back cast, then made the false fly- 
drying cast, and again put the fly on 
the water a few inches away from the 
spot at which it first fell, and so on 

