Fishing with Floating Flies

en to Use th

er average American fly-fishing conditions the floating fly is sometimes at a disadvantage and the average American angler may well accept this fact with good grace, using the dry or sunken fly turn and turn about as the occasion determines. In this I do not wish to be understood as holding any brief for the wet as against the dry fly for any such reason as that "bigger bags" may at times be killed with the wet fly than with the dry-i

rictly personal matter; my fishing opportunities are many, and although I am on the stream a great deal (during the last ten years at the very least four days a week throughout the season) it is only infrequently that I go out with any great desire to "catch fish." T

the surface is not too broken; the stage of water should be normal, although at the lower levels, as the season advances, everything is in favor of the dr

with the progress of spring, air and water have grown warm, and the bright sunshine brings on the natural ephemeridae, the fish are usually ground-feeding, or feeding in mid

of a glittering or highly colored fly which, fished considerably beneath the surface, arouses their curiosity or anger or may be taken for a small minnow. This style of fishing with the fly is distinctly on a lower level than the correct imitation of the natural floating insect by means of the dry fly;

f the water is rising steadily; the observant fly-fisherman will note the natural ephemeridae abundant at intervals over and on the stream-and there is no sight in nature (at least from the writer's viewpoint and, I fancy, from that of all o

sufficiently obvious that, under the conditions named, a very delicately dressed floating fly, in appearance quite similar to the natural ephemeridae common to the stream, attached to a practically invisible leader and riding down buoyantly on the surface, with wings erect, in the exact, jaunty manner of the

h or broken, shallow or deep, and so on. The dry fly having originated upon the placid currents of the south of England rivers, it is only natural that the impression should prevail that a floating fly can be used effectiv

t where white water prevails, although the angler may persist in the use of the dry fly, actual dry fly fishing is impossible, the fly can only be made to float for an infinitesima

milar manner, that is, is drawn under the surface in broken water and carried here and there by conflicting currents. For some time it has been my custom to use dry flies for wet fly fishing, but I would emphasize the fact that fishing a drowned dry fly in white water is hardly genuine dry fly fis

ly floated over probably three-quarters of the water comprised. By smooth water I do not wish to be understood as meaning absolutely flat water-the floating fly will ride a wave or a succession of them with surprising buoyancy; but if the crests of the waves are broken into miniature "white-caps" then the fly is soon drowned. Th

fly fishermen. That the trout of such a stream grow "gut shy" and exceedingly canny and, at best, when the stream is clear and natural insect food somewhat abundant, rise reluctantly to the wet fly, is axiomatic. In view of the fine tackle, the finesse, and the fidelity to nature afforded by the dry fly method it would seem that no angle

y wherever he may consistently do so-that he must not consider his box of dry flies as merely supplementary to his familiar, old-time book of wet flies, but must give preference to the dry fly m

test of the efficacy of the method when followed consistently, for the degree of true sport which the dry fly is capable of affo

t depend upon his knowledge of trout haunts and habits in the determination of this matter. Given a stream fairly abundantly stocked with trout, either fontinalis, the native speckled brook trout, fario, the brown trout, or with rainbows, where the most, the be

s"; particularly in warm weather, where small, cold, spring-fed brooks enter the trout stream; and anywhere where the set of the current, as in little bays and on the bends, is such as to collect inse

is retained subconsciously-the trend of the current, the character of the banks and stream-bed, and where, in relation to some prominent object, such as a large boulder or possibly a sunken log, the trout rose; all these and other details are noted and mentally recorded, and eventually the angler, by the correlation and association of these mental pictures, comes to recognize

the writer has spotted rising fish to his very practical advantage. In this regard it might be well to note the fact that a rising and feeding trout creates very little disturbance on the surface of the stream, and does not, in accordance with the popular idea, leap above the surface; sometimes there is a slight "plop," and at times a little spray throw