Fishing with Floating Flies
()
About this ebook
Related to Fishing with Floating Flies
Related ebooks
Fishing with Floating Flies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrout Flies of Devon and Cornwall, and When and How to Use Them Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHooked on Fly Fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChats on Angling Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Palmer: A Practical Treatise on Fly Fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Giant Fish of Florida Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Book of Fly Fishing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fishing For Trout Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSea Fishing - For the Beginner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gentleman Angler Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lure and Lore of Trout Fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrout and Their Food: A Compact Guide for Fly Fishers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amateur Fish Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSome Notes on Sea Fishing - Whaling Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmateur Fish Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScotch Loch-Fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFish Farming - For Pleasure and Profit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLearning from the Water: Fishing Tactics & Fly Designs for the Toughest Trout Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFly Fishing Basics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Concise Practical Treatise on Artificial Fly Fishing for Trout Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGetting Started Fly Fishing For Trout Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFavorite Flies and Their Histories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMastering Fly Fishing: A Comprehensive Guide to Techniques, Equipment, and Enjoying the Sport of Angling Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Fly Fish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrank Sawyer's Nymphing Secrets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSea Fishing From Small Boats Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Catch & Release: Exploring the Future of Fly Fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSight Fishing the Flats and Beyond Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Fishing with Floating Flies
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Fishing with Floating Flies - Samuel G. Camp
Samuel G. Camp
Fishing with Floating Flies
EAN 8596547224662
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
STRIKING A TROUT
PLAYING A TROUT
A FINAL CAST
CHAPTER I
Table of Contents
The Matter of Equipment
No man knows, or ever will know, the art of fly-fishing in its entirety, and the present writer is far from claiming omniscience in the matter. Wherefore the fact may well be emphasized that the following pages are not intended for the expert—the seasoned angler skilled in wet, dry, and mid-water fly-fishing—but, rather, for the beginner at the sport of fishing with floating flies and for the novice who may take up fly-fishing with the purpose of ultimately employing the dry fly. At the outset, before going into the details of the dry fly caster's equipment and methods, it would seem necessary to outline certain general phases of the subject with special reference to the enlightenment of the veritable beginner at dry or wet fly fishing, and also with regard to the present status of the sport of dry fly casting practiced upon American waters.
American dry fly fishing may be defined briefly as the art of displaying to the trout a single artificial fly floating upon the surface of the stream in the exact manner of the natural insect. Upon occasions, somewhat rare, indeed, but nevertheless of sufficient frequency to render the fact noteworthy, the American dry fly man casts consciously to a rising and feeding trout—the invariable custom of the English dry fly purist.
On the trout streams of this country, however, the orthodox manner of fishing the floating fly is to fish all the water as when wet fly casting.
In America, owing to the fact that the dry fly angler fishes the water and not the rise, wet and dry fly fishing are far more closely related than is the case in England where the orthodox sportsman stalks the trout, casting exclusively to a rising and feeding fish; from this it may be easily deduced that much of the following discussion on the subject of fishing with floating flies is—in the very nature of things must be—equally applicable to either dry or wet fly fishing.
Moreover, angling conditions are such in this country that the fly-fisherman to be consistently successful cannot rely solely upon either one method or the other—he should be passably expert with either the dry or the wet fly, employing one or the other as conditions warrant or the occasion renders imperative. Dry fly fishing conditions here and in England are quite dissimilar. The English dry fly specialist follows his sport, in general, upon the gin-clear, quiet chalk streams; slow, placid rivers, preserved waters artificially stocked with brown trout (Salmo fario), and hard-fished by the owners or lessees.
The open season is a long one, extending, taking an average, from early in the spring, about the first of March, to the first of October; and as a consequence of the steady and hard fishing the trout naturally become very shy and sophisticated. Owing to the placidity of the streams the rise of a trout is not difficult to detect, and it seems to pay best to cast to a single trout actually known to be on the rise and feeding rather than to fish all the water on the principle of chuck-and-chance-it.
On the other hand, the American fly-caster largely enjoys his sport upon the trout streams of the woods or wilderness; erratic rivers with current alternating between swift and slow, broken water and smooth, rapid and waterfall, deep pool and shallow riffle. While insect life is not, of course, absent, one can actually follow such a stream for days without observing the rise of a feeding trout, although, as noted above, sometimes a rising fish will, of course, be seen; but seldom will a sufficient number be observed to warrant the angler's relying exclusively upon casting to the rise.
That, indeed, upon the average trout stream of this country, the well-chosen and cleverly cast floating fly has its place has been amply proved by the experience of many anglers. Upon the typical wilderness trout stream, where the fish are both very abundant and totally uneducated, dry fly fishing would be in the nature of a farce—although doubtless successful in view of the fact that the wild trout of such a stream will rise to almost anything chucked almost anyhow. But the average American trout stream may now be classed as a civilized stream, and it is upon such waters that the dry fly has proved its worth by succeeding time and again, under certain conditions, when the wet fly has failed.
The conditions under which the balance of probable success is on the side of the dry fly and against the wet will be more particularly detailed in succeeding chapters; in general, it may be said that the angler who fishes largely upon hard-fished public streams—and that means the great majority of fly-fishermen—where much whipping and wading of the stream by all sorts and conditions of fishermen, good, bad, and indifferent, have rendered the trout wise in their generation, cannot well afford to overlook the possibilities of the floating fly. In such streams the trout only upon rare occasions are afforded the opportunity of seeing a single artificial fly, singularly lifelike in appearance, cocked and floating in a natural way upon the surface—and they will rise to such a fly, if cleverly placed on the water in such a manner as not to arouse suspicion, when a drag of two or more wet flies would only serve to set them down still more obstinately.
Parenthetically, in this connection, in view of the fact that fishing with the dry fly is beyond doubt a very successful method of taking trout when or where other methods may have failed, it should be obvious—to put the matter on a strictly practical basis—that the assumption of an holier than thou
relation by the dry fly enthusiast toward his brother of the wet fly, on the ground that dry fly fishing is more sportsmanlike, is, to say the least, somewhat illogical. Surely there is little virtue in the resort to and employment of an angling method of proved deadliness under conditions which at the time render the sunken fly harmless—however, we are not here concerned with the ethics of the matter.
But dry fly casting does, indeed, call for a high degree of skill on the part of the angler, both in casting and fishing the fly; additionally, it is imperative that one should be familiar with the best there is in fishing tackle and know much about the habits of the trout and of stream-life in general. In a word, the customary rough-and-ready equipment of the average desultory fly-caster will not do—nor will the ordinary unrefined and casual methods of the average wet fly fisherman.
To succeed