
Indian Pitch on the Sourdnahunk. The rugged beauty of Maine’s trout streams has ever made them 
objects of the anglers’ attention. 
thirty times a minute, for three or four 
minutes—very easy to tell about, but 
try it once and find out a real test for 
wrist endurance! 
EMEMBER I was using a D line 
and a stiff 4%4 oz. dry-fly rod. Just 
as my wrist was giving out and my 
fingers becoming numb, a trout rose to 
my fly. All sense of fatigue instantly 
vanished. I jerked the fly away and 
kept up the “hatch.” Soon they were 
jumping two and three ata time. They 
_ Were jumping while my fly was in the 
_air, and there was absolutely no fly on 
'the water! I had done my friend an 
‘injustice. He had not told a fish 
story.” A particularly heavy splash oc- 
curred at the right hand corner of the 
‘cove where I have seen a dozen size- 
‘able trout lying in eighteen inches of 
water with their noses up against a 
boulder. My fly was over the place in 
an instant and immediately was gulped 
down with a resounding smack. Then 
‘I struck, slowly and gently. He let me 
lead him quietly and sedately out of 
‘the spring hole like a little lamb, but 
a rod’s length from the canoe he 
changed his mind and there was a nice, 
fast little tussle. I kept him away from 
‘the spring hole, however, and finally 
netted him—thirteen inches, just under 
apound. And all the time I was play- 
ing him the other trout kept on jump- 
ing, not the way they jump in Daicey 
when the May-Fly are up, but off and 
on in a somewhat desultory fashion as 
if they had gotten the habit. 
I was late for supper as it was and 
I knew there were plenty of trout in 
York’s ice-box. There always are— 
usually there are too many. I was sat- 
) isfied. I had performed an interesting 
experiment and I could still say I had 
. 
} . 
never been skunked at the little spring 
hole. Out of pure devilment, I replaced 
the dainty little Variation Baigent’s 
Brown with a No. 8 Parmachenee Belle, 
“The Terror of the Maine Woods.” I 
cast it as nicely and as lightly as a 
No. 8 could be cast on a nine foot tap- 
ered leader terminating in a 2-x point, 
and that’s much more nicely and much 
more lightly than it could possibly be 
cast on a wet-fly leader. Result: I set 
down every trout in the spring hole. 
Then I went back to York’s for a late 
supper. Wasn’t that more fun than 
a two-pound double on No. 8 wet-flies 
and a weeping rod, or a four-pounder 
on a No. 6 Morning Glory? 
I think the most effective answer to 
the question WHY DRY? is the rhetor- 
ical question: WHY WET? 
The following excerpt, sent in by the 
author, should be of interest to all dry 
fly men: 
WHERE THE BRIGHT WATERS 
MEET 
By Harry Plunket Greene. Published 
by Philip Allen & Company, Qual- 
ity Court, London, 1924. Copy of 
pages 209 and 210. 
“But if you can wear arising fish down, 
you can also bring a non-rising fish up 
—by creating an artificial rise and per- 
suading him that the duns have started 
in for the day. I have done it on the 
Bourne dozens of times, and was able 
once to demonstrate it to “Corrigeen” of 
the Field, who, though skeptical at first, 
accepted it at once when he saw it in 
performance. He has, I understand, 
practiced it since himself with great 
success. Two things are necessary to 
bring it off—you must see your fish, 
and your sixth sense must tell you that 
he will rise if it is made 
worth his while. He may 
be lying motionless on 
the bottom, sullen and 
asleep to look at, he may 
not have a wag in his 
tail, he may, in fact, look 
hopeless for your pur- 
pose; but if you know in 
your bones, as you do in 
some queer way, that he 
would be glad of a dun 
or two for breakfast, you 
can try for him with per- 
fect confidence. One 
thing is sure—he is per- 
fectly comfortable where 
he is, and is not going to 
trouble to come up unless 
it is really going to be a 
good thing—zjin _ other 
words, unless he is con- 
vinced that a rise has 
come on and is well set. 
What you have got to do 
is to persuade him that 
the river has never pro- 
vided such a rise of dun in its exis- 
tence, and that if he does not come up 
for them he will have missed the meal 
of a life-time. 
“You keep pegging your fly above 
him, sometimes in front of his nose, 
sometimes close to his right, sometimes 
to his left, sometimes far out in the 
circle and sometimes at the back of his 
head. In fact, you must cover the whole 
field of vision. There is no need to 
change the fly; the same one does for 
all. You may do it a couple of hun- 
dred times before he will take any no- 
tice. Then you will see an almost im- 
perceptible undulation of his body; at 
the next cast his tail will wag very 
slightly; then he rises about two inches 
off the bottom and settles back again; 
then he either rushes at the fly and 
takes it with a snap, or much oftener 
sails slowly up to it and starts quietly 
in on his meal, fully believing that 
there is a good hour’s feed ahead 
of him. (The millionaire can, of course, 
send his chauffeur up to the bridge 
above, with a box of flies, and instruc- 
tions to drop them one by one into the 
various ripples. .Why make a toil of 
a pleasure?) 
“Tt is an almost invariable experi- 
ence when duns begin to come up after 
a long blank, that only the small fish 
take them for the first few minutes. 
There is evidently a reluctance on the 
part. of their 
elders to bestir 
themselves unless 
it means real bus- 
iness. The ‘arti- 
ficial’ rise is sim- 
ply a matter of 
patience and 
keeping... at it.” 

