in a language, the reading
whereof reduces me to temporary insanity. And yet I seem to recollect
some bygone incidents concerning fish and fishing. I have a
well-defined notion that I once stood on Flat Rock, in Big Pine Creek
and caught over 350 fine trout in a short day's fishing. Also that many
times I left home on a bright May or June morning, walked eight miles,
caught a twelve-pound creel of trout and walked home before bedtime.

I remember that once, in Michigan, on the advice of local fishermen, I
dragged a spoon around High Bank Lake two days, with little result save
half a dozen blisters on my hands; and that on the next morning, taking
a long tamarack pole and my own way of fishing, I caught, before 10
A.M., fifty pounds of bass and pickerel, weighing from two to ten pounds
each.

Gibson, whose spoon, line and skiff I had been using and who was the
fishing oracle of that region, could hardly believe his eyes. I kept
that country inn, and the neighborhood as well, supplied with fish for
the next two weeks.

It is truth to say that I have never struck salt or fresh waters,
where edible fish were at all plentiful, without being able to take, in
some way, all that I needed. Notably and preferably with the fly if
that might be; if not, then with worms, grubs, minnows, grasshoppers,
crickets, or any sort of doodle bug their highnesses might affect. When
a plump, two-pound trout refuses to eat a tinseled, feathered fraud, I
am not the man to refuse him something more edible.

That I may not be misunderstood, let me say that I recognized the
speckled brook trout as the very emperor of all game fish, and angling
for him with the fly as the neatest, most fascinating sport attainable
by the angler. But there are thousands of outers who, from choice or
necessity, take their summer vacations where Salmo fontinalis is not to
be had. They would prefer him, either on the leader or the table; but
he is not there; "And a man has got a stomach and we live by what we
eat."

Wherefore, they go a-fishing for other fish. So that they are
successful and sufficiently fed, the difference is not so material. I
have enjoyed myself hugely catching catties on a dark night from a
skiff with a hand-line.

I can add nothing in a scientific way to the literature of fly-fishing;
but I can give a few hints that may be conducive to practical
success, as well with trout as with less noble fish, In fly-fishing,
one serviceable four-ounce