There is a certain school of anglers that go about the business of
fishing with much gravity. You should hear the Great Neal discourse of
their profundities. Lacking that privilege, you may conceive a pair of
these anglers met beside a river, seeking to discover which of the many
insects flying about is preferred by the trout on that particular
morning. There is disagreement, or there is lack of evidence. It is
decided to catch a trout, eviscerate him, and obtain internal and
indisputable evidence. For the cast any fly is used, and when the trout
is opened it is learned that he has been feeding on a small black
insect; whereupon our anglers tie a number of flies to resemble that
insect, and proceed solemnly with their day's work. Though the trout
scorn their fine feathers, they will not fish with any fly.
With the subtleties of this school I have no sympathy. They might be of
profit on waters that are much fished, but they are wasted on the
wilderness, where the trout will rise to almost any lure. When I make an
expedition I take along two or three dozen flies, for the mere pleasure
of looking at them, and rearranging them in the fly-book; but I wet
less than half a dozen. On the Delectable River we cast only when trout
are needed for the frypan. You are to picture canoes drawn up on a
sandbar, and a ribbon of black smoke curling from a strip of birch bark
that marks the beginning of a fire. It is time to get the fish. So I set
up my rod and walk upstream perhaps a hundred yards, casting on the
current where it cuts under the farther bank. Almost every cast evokes a
trout; this one takes the tail fly, a Silver Doctor, the next one
strikes the Bucktail dropper; any other flies would serve. The largest
fish is taken on my return, from under the stern of one of the canoes.
Where trout are so plentiful and so unwary, there is no call for the
preparatory work of the evisceration school of anglers.
My reason for using a dropper fly is not to offer the trout two
counterfeit insects differing in shape or color; as commonly attached to
the leader, the dropper swims with the tail fly. "Sir," said the Great
Neal, in the manner of Samuel Johnson, "when the dropper is properly
attached, as I attach it, two aspects of the lure are presented to the
fish, the one fly moving through the water, the other dancing an inch
or so above. This, Sir, is how I tie it."