Show I 1 I 1 TROUT AND FLIES FLIE S I 1 THAT ANGLERS invariably 1 FOLLOW L I 1 an an ansler ler dis urs on tho 00 taboos of the sacred fisli T there mire 13 seen mit to ia lie le no 0 o I 1 why other 1311 than ill file ills S Y 1 not ile used in li okIng trout r angling Angll nc on the It itchen clien the test and all 1119 la governed I 1 other fashionable trout streams streAM by a rigid right law that the fly Is 13 the only per lure no sportsman questions the tradition which indeed is so thoroughly ebly established that the very poacher in the dead of night would blush at the thought of using anything grosser than an tin ulder alder nearly all etiquettes howsoever difficult it may bo be to perceive what originally gave rise to them are rational at bottom but 4 this one sums seems an exception there is no obvious reason why worm or gentles or the alexandra fly or even minnow should be tabooed tabo oed at least there Is none that we can sec see perhaps if one were venturesome enough I 1 to ask a hampshire fis fisherman berman la in what I 1 respect a minnow is offensive wo we should be told that it falls into the water with a chocking plash the splash is undeniable but surely it is an inadequate explanation of the taboo A minnow is not the only thing that splashes we have seen the lightest dry fly splash abo abominably in ably to the obvious terror of the trout and the hampshire fisherman himself splashes for he fie invariably wades and in ill that act disturbs the water in halt half an hour more than all the minnows in the tackle shops could possibly IS do in a day lay it itis is equally impossible to think that the objectionable characteristic of the minnow isthan Is that it is too killing the minnow is not killing at all ho ile who could do any good with a n minnow in the pellucid waters of a chalk stream would be an artist of incomparable skill the trout usually flee an anglers minnow in a perturbation compared par edwith with which the author of ISa Sa lomes lumes displeasure with the lord chamberlain la Is equanimity can it be then that in ta bloing the minnow our fishermen are making a virtue of a necessity and not it merely because it is u useless we might it incline icline to this conjecture if it were not that the best managed dry try fly I 1 is usually useless us eleis too why are our modern fishermen so fastidious as to the means by which they achieve failure rumination on the gentle makes the subject flubs c t darker than ever indeed gentles gentlest which h ma may y be defined as its maggots wasp grubs caddis or any other white creeping ng things are treated according to a code ot of angling morals which is quite inexplicably arbitrary you roust must not use a FA gentle when it is a stone bait but you do a highly meritorious action when ten min atea afterward he has taken to cl th the wings owings of the green drake and you belze him lim to adorn a tail you must not usen use 1 maggot from the butchar butch cr cris but you arc are at liberty to put a bit of white leather on a fly hook book and that oddly enough is sometimes a luro more deadly than the gentle of which it is intended to bo be au an imi imitation t ion ba you must not use an alexandra but ut do body will hinder you from working with a 2 inch jock joek scott it if you are fool enough to prefer that means of failure there Is i however a reason for this particular taboo it is founded upon a wisdom akin to that of theophilo Theoph llo gautiere Gaut Gau lers tiers cat which hearing a parrot speak remarked reflectively this is a not a bird this is a gentleman listen to his conversation sa tion nl in the estimate of the co conscientious is aei fisherman the alexandra fly is not a fly it is a minnow its dressing of feathers looks like wings but there are three hooks books underneath and find when the thing la is in the water it has las the appearance of a green minno thus far the philosophy of the ta taboo boo la is unimpeachable but we can go no further the lesem resemblance blance to a minnow Is no closer than that of a brown hackle to a spider which is so little close that we have the audacity to doubt whether the trout feels himself to be rising at a when we feel that it Is a spider we are offering him what cause indeed have we to believe bellere that fish take our lures in the spirit in which they are given Is it not pretty well ascertained that there Is no fly no to shrimp no prawn which has any like nesa ness to the blue devils the thunder and light ninga and other engines on which salmon willingly impale themselves what can a trout be thinking of when it ft snaps at a parr tall let us hope that anglers will not allow this so called nineteenth century to pass away with the premises prem isea of their science it is high time they were considering the possibility that fish take some lures merely tor for the fu fun n of f the thing or by way of resenting an 1 insult and not because the lurea lures seem something good to eat having gone eo so far in heresy we may as well say a word for the worm any ady one caught in the act of fishing in hampshire with a worm would be promptly expelled by his club As lie would have broken tho the rules that would serve the rascal right i but really the taboo of the worm Is like crimes acts in the eyes of the liberal party when it is the other party wh which I 1 ch has passed them a means of turning innocence into wrong the w worm ormin in itself is inoffensive very often especially on a bright summer day it would be less of a failure than a ft fly y usually is but that should not be accounted toila discredit the streams on which it is forbidden are so well stocked that do barm would be done although all the fish ermen on them tried worm now and tb then en and niad succeeded as often and as abundantly as their skill permitted successful worm fishing in a clear stream is no mean art I 1 it might berated bo rated higher than success with the dry fly for while it is true that the trout as its a rule prefer a worm to an insect it is also true that to vast cast a worm so as to attract the fish Is much more difficult than to place a dry fly neatly london saturday review |