Evening Star Newspaper, April 28, 1935, Page 57

Stage — Screen Autos — Radio Part 4—10 Pages ‘WASHINGTO. FEATURES Ihe Sunday Shae D. C, ’ SUNDAY MORN NG, APRIL 28, 1935. Books—Art—Music Children’s Page SWIFT, ROCKY STREAMS DRAW CAPITAL SPORTSMEN And the Attraction Seems to Be Trout of the Rainbow or Brook Variety—Tips for the Angler Who Wades the Nearby Waters of Virginia and Maryland. By Donald N. Carpenter. ANY prominent sportsmen of the Capital visit streams in nearby Maryland and Vir- ginia in quest of brook and rainbow trout. Every week end during April. May and June these | anglers climb rocky streams and cast | their fiys—some with skill and others without, but all with enthusiasm for these game fish, which although small in size are real scrappers if given only half & chance. Amid surroundings of great beauty this sport is carried on and the large demand that grows | daily for more fish and fishing is easily understood. The sport itself is extremely fascinating. The fish stocked regularly in these nearby streams are of good size and the hatcheries are hard put to keep up with the growing demand. On opening day in Maryland this year, which was a Monday, one Maryland stream was so crowded that many | anglers jokingly said that if you wanted to fish you would have to bring your own rock to stand on— and there are plenty of rocks along the banks of this stream. “Trout, like folk, are queer. There s no guide who can tell exactly how or when you will catch them. It is generally conceded that they bite Wwhen hungry, also when irritated, or when prompted by idle curiosity. In early morn or late evening the largest fish are brought to net, but not always. So, like the dog chasing his tail, we find ourselves right where we started. Then why write about trout? periences will furnish ideas that can prove to be valuable at times when one’s own are exhausted. Experimen- tation and knowledge go hand-in-hand to make up this gentle art, and to- gether form a potent factor for suc- | cess. FOR those who are not hampered by experience, these words are written. Events as chronicled by my fishing diary have aided me from year to year in making successful decisions afield. - So for what they are worth, I herein set forth a few incidents that should be helpful in your selection of a lure under the given conditions. Tuesday. April 1: Temperature, 30 degrees, Maryland; cold rain followed by sunshine, slight breeze; water clear and high. At 5:30 am. opening day Bil], the captain, and I pulled on our boots and waded into Big Hunting Creek after » wakeful night spent in our car be- side the stream. Midstream boulders glistened with ice in the early morn- ing light. Hands, pliable as an Egyptian mummy's, to rig our rods. My first choice, a gold Colorado spin- ner, No. 0. Second cast, a half-ounce, six-and-a-half-foot fly rod to the limit. I followed, stumbling over snags and rocks in the pool. I landed my prize, the first trout of the season. Another fish and the warming sun seemed to slow the action. rod size Shimmyite with a tiny strip of pork rind with good success. At midafternoon I examined my catch and found seven good trout in my creel. Enough for my needs and I had had a day’s sport, having caught and released uninjured many fish. A 3-toot-level leader was used and, both lures. mentioned were fished deep and slow, with occasional jerks and long casts. My partners, likewise, found the same lures most effective. Sunday, May 4. Temperature, 89 degrees, Maryland. Clear, hot, slight breeze. Stream low and clear. Pishing creek, 6 a.m. Started up- stream, using dry flys. Lots of ac- tion from young, inexperienced trout. Brown and white bi-visible, geod, but largest fish was a 9-inch brook trout which rose to a carpenter fly, a pepper and salt spider of good float- ing quality in rough water. Stopped to eat lunch and caught a bull frog with an ibis fiy. In the afternoon, on the small right fork on the stream, I added two good keepers to my bag, using the Pflueger artificial white grub. Fished wet and dry. Engrossed in my sport, I did not heed the un- natural darkness of midafternoon down among the rocky pools of the canyon. I finally became aware that something was wrong, and on looking up, saw heavy clouds of brown, ominous smoke just overhead Dis- turbed, but regretful that I must give up the sport, I first ascertained the direction of the wind and then climbed out of the steep canyon and made my way downstream. A raging for- est fire was fairly on my heels as I y walked back to the reservoir. ORly Simply because another’s ex- | I changed to a fly- | three trout kept. but all fat brnokies'\ | and caught fairly, augmented by the | pair of frog's legs. enough for a meal. | Used 4':-foot tapered leader, making | | short casts only. The fire was & dis- | astrous blow to the watershed of this | | branch of the stream and burned six days before being controlled. | UNDAY, May 25. Temperature, 70 | degrees, Maryland. Clear, cool, | very windy. Water low and_clear. Big branch of fishing creek at 5:30 | am. as crowded as Fifth avenue, with | elbow room to swing a fly rod at a ! premium. I pushed upstream, selected {s pool and “squatted” to maintain my claim and waited for things to calm {down after the early morning bar- |rage of liver and minnows by the | “natives” had stirred the fish up. A | black gnat, fan wing on a No. 12 | hook was the first offering and was | | accepted enthusiastically by a brook | trout of barely legal size. Playing him out, I wet my hands and re- leasing the hook gently, placed him back uninjured in the cool water for future reference. All morning, the olack gnat was & great “killer,” but during the afternoon, the artificial | grub, tied on a 10-hook was snapped up greedily when floated over a water- falls into the pool below. Your heart takes a flip-flop when Mr. Trout smacks your lure on the surface! Sunday, June 1. Temperature, 90 degrees, Maryland. Clear, hot, calm. ‘Water low and very clear. 4:15 am. and the gloom of night melting before the first brilliant rays of morning light, as I cautiously worked my way out on a spit of land at the west end of a mountain lake. What a picture to the trout fisherman! Mist rising lazily from crystal calm water. I break the spell by casting a red and white fly rod, size “trix-oreno,” out into the deep water and let it sink, working it in with slow twitches of the wrist. Sud- |denly, I am aware of a smashing | “strike” and my tiny 2}2-ounce rod pvends double as my unseen quarry | takes line, making the reel click nois- ily. My faithful companion, the cap- tain, with the first sound of battle, comes on the run and we match wits, the trout and I, he determined to throw the hook or swim under the protective alder roots at my feet, where all would be lost, and I to keep him in the open water. Taxing the rod to its limit, I work my fish to the surface. At last, a glimpse of his size and color. A granddaddy native brook trout! With shaking hands, I lowered my net and prepared to end the fight. On seeing the net, brookie came to life with- a violent start that wound up in the alder roots, his objective. Whereupon, I made the luckiest retrieve of my career and finally emerged on the bank soaking wet, line snarled, but triumphantly nolding 13 inches of real ‘“native” trout. What a fish and what a fight! After minutely examining the veauties of my catch and gloating with the cap- tain, who shared my pleasure, I re- within a short.time,. llndadlahfl sumed fishing &t the same spot and |in Piurook trout 10 inches long on the same ure. Soon other anglers arrived, so we walked upstream tc avoid the crowd and caught lots of small fish, using a dry fly. Best patterns were Fan Wing, Royal Coachman, Black Gnat and McGinty. I only kept the first pair of fish that day, but what beauties they were! Wednesday, June 11, 90 degrees, Maryland. light breeze. Water low. 9 a.m., Little Hunting Creek. Sum- mer conditions and beautiful water | to fish. My party of friends worked | downstream and I up, fishing dry | flys. Using varicolored spider flys, I| landed, in rapid succession, four good fish, 10 inches, 8 inches, 7!2 inches and 7 inches, all brook trout. Just before noon & member of my party came upstream and called me down to a large pool where the whole crowd was gathered. There before us in the crystal waters lay & monster rainbow trout 181, inches long, fanning his regal form lazily in the sunlight. I sat down to watch the action and found there was none. The rainbow refused all offerings, no matter how well presented. This I learned had gone on for more than an hour. As the last angler gave up in disgust, I took my turn with many misgivings. | Casting carefully each and every fly pattern in my kit, I then turned to spinners with not so much as » quivering fin for response. At last [ put on a battered wobbler, a red and white trix-oreno. A cast, another cast and the fish changed its position slightly. Noting his interest (or anger) I started to work the lure di- rectly toward him downstream. giv- ing it every kind of seductive action I could conceive. He appeared to be annoyed and on the sixth cast he opened his jaws wide and charged the bait, coming head-on. As he struck, I set the hook hard with & flick of the wrist and the battle started. ‘Three and one-fourth pounds of speedy rainbow trout on the slender tip of the baby two and one-half ounce fly-rod is just plain dynamite. His first jump at the end of a long run shook me up violently, but some- how the light leader and rod held. To make a long story short, he finally came to net, and after being photo- graphed was returned to the water to give some more sport another day. He deserved his freedom, and, besides, large trout are not the table delicacy that their 7 to 9 inch brothers are. Oh, yeah, sez you! temperature Clear, hot, [OW, from the foregoing, Yyou should be able to select a bait that should be effective in nearby waters this year. At this point per- haps it would be well to consider your equipment in order that your trip may be as comfortable as possible and that your ou’fit may be of the utmost com- pactness. First, for clothes, may I recommend a woolen . shirt; woolen socks reaching to the knee, and woolen trousers, long. A fishing jacket with as many pockets as possible is indis- pensable, and you will find a short jacket with 10 to 14 pockets available practically any good sporting goods store, ' 3t.can De worn either waist-high waders or hip boots. Foot- | gear, as aforementioned, may be either | a full-length hip boot of light weight, | with either felt or cleated sole, or | waist-high waders with stocking or boot feet. Of course, the cleated sole | or felt sole should be used. For fish- ing in our fast mountain streams, with | round and very slippery rocks, the felt sole is indispensable, as it practically | eliminates slipping. To top off this | outfit, I should suggest a felt hat with | fairly wide brim. It will be shower- proof and also act as a sun shade. These items can be purchased at vari- ous prices, but the best always pays. You will note that wool is the pre- dominant material for the angler's clothing, inasmuch as it has the virtue of keeping one warm in the early hours of the morning and also if you should become wet by rain or falling in the stream it will keep you from catching cold. This is the secret of the north woods lumberjacks. The next item of importance is a creel. The creel is usually made of whole or split willow and serves a multiplicity of purposes. Personally, I find that my creel is useful for carrying my lunch, extra tackle, a bottle of city water (as stream water is not usually safe to drink), and, incidentally, fish. A split willow creel has an additional virtue, if well made, of being able to with- stand fairly violent falls. One manu- facturer has been making a de luxe creel that. has built into its lid an alu- minum tackle kit that is available in & jiffy by a single catch, and that there- fore makes it a nicety that, although expensive, is highly serviceable. ‘The actual tackle itself we will now take up in the order of its importance. First the rod. It should be made of split bamboo and can vary in length from 6 to 9 feet and in weight from 2 to 6 ounces. Personally, I have found that for our fairly small and quite brushy streams nearby, that a 61;-foot 2%-ounce rod is ideal for dry fly fishing. It will handle com- fortably 50 feet of line, fish up to 4 pounds in weight and has a re- silience that is marvelous and adds tremendously to your sport, .even though you hook the smallest of fish. For dry fly fishing, select a rod with a good deal of backbone; in fact, quite stiffish,” For fishing with spinners or bait, & lively rod with lots of action should be purchased. 4lso, & more . OT DREAMS OF THE ANGLER. Top, left: Capt. R. I Miller, U. 8. A, a local trout enthusiast, with a nice string of “brookies.” ‘Top, center: Two “native” brook trout and one “stocked” brook trout caught in Pishing Creek. Top, right: A mountaineer fishing with home-made tackle, but he lands his quota. Below, left: A. Blustein of Washington angling in Fishing Creek, Md. Below, center: The author of this article making the “high” cast with a dry fly. pounds caught by the author. lengthy rod than the dry fly one is| fly in a heavy wind. Below, right: A prize Maryland rainbow trout weighing 3 The tapered desirable, as it makes the iures more | line is valuable because of its delicacy easily handled fishing downstream. | in presenting a fly. However, in a Be sure that your rod has a fly-ring attached so that when walking through brush or forest you can at- tach the hook of your lure thereto and avold many entanglements. It is also well to have a rule or meas- ure drawa with lines on the first sec- tion of your rod so that when you hook any fish you may hold him by the leader alongside your rod and instantly determine whether he is of legal size and worth keeping. IP’ YOU are of a frugal nature the reel offers an opportunity to save money on your outfit without reducing your efficiency. The principal thing to keep in mind is that the reel and line should balance your rod so that there will be no pull from the tip or from the butt. A well balanced rod can be fished for hours without strain on the wrist or arm and adds to your accuracy. A serviceable reel may be purchased from 75 cents up and is usually made with solid walls or per- forated walls in accordance with local demaud. The perforated wall has the advantage of allowing water to drain from your line and also shows the angler at a glance how much line is on his refl. Outside of the weight factor to give balance to the asugler's tackle, the reel merely serves the pur- pose of being a reservoir for the line and is only used to reel in very large fish, as the average trout can be played by the rod itself and line held in the hand. Lines are of great importance in trout fishing. A poorly selected one detracts from your sport and hampers. skill. The level line has the mmamspwp-m 1 high wind it is hard to manage. Lines are best purchased in 30-yard lengths and coated with a rubber composition. The core should always be of braided silk, and for long life greased regu- larly with any standard line dressing. When out of use, a line should be removed from the reel and submerged in a petroleum product. The matter of terminal tackle, or leaders, is important to all dry or wet fly fishermen. The leader serves the purpose of making invisible the con- nection of lure with line. A tapered leader is always best and the matter of its color is the source of much discussion among fishermen. I have found locally that a gut leader treated with silver nitrate and exposed in the same manner as a film gives a light brown effect that is quite in- visible in our small streams. Quite naturally the leader with the finest taper is generally the best. However, your tackle is no stronger than its weakest point, which would be the tip of the tapered end, se, if you are oot skillful, a fairly heavy taper is desirable. In the fastest water, & heavy leader is quite as effective as a light one, inasmuch as the trout is not afforded any great length of time to inspect your offering closely due to its excessive speed. If you are using a 6 to 7 foot rod, a leader of not over 41, feet in length is the best. For the more lengthy rods, leaders from 6 to 9 feet are desirable. Some of the more useful items of additional equipment found in the kit of “ye complete angler” are aluminum boxes for flys, a leader box for soaking leaders, a combination gut snipper and tongs- to be attached on the coat, amadol for the drying .of flys, s-knife with disgorger jttached, ¢ |and of course a bottle opener. | items, it would seem, could be con- dry-fly -oil "pointers of s stream, use a long line, keep as much bottle with brush attached to stopper, | made so as to be readily attached to the angler's coat: a leather and felt line dressing book for handy use, & bottle of redrying solution in which to submerge “drowned” flys and remove | water from them; a hook sharpener These veniently packed into a single van. Seriously, these accessories add greatly to one’s sport and are all invaluable to the sportsman. NOW some tips as to the fishing | In dry-fly | fishing, a fast stretch of water, you | will find the brook trout lying on the ; itself are in order. edge of the current and in the eddies. With few exceptions, large trout dur- ing the daytime hide under rocks and are hard to lure from their lairs. In our local streams you will find the rainbow trout in the fastest water, and in presenting a fly I would like to recommend that as little line and leader be floated on the water as possible for best resulte. This can be done by holding the rod high in the | air, using a short line and arresting the forward cast prematurely, allow- ing the fly only to alight on the water and travel downstream at the exact speed of the current itself. This form of cast can only be made upstream and with a dry fly. In wet-fly fishing, two flys are gen- erally used, a wet fly on the end of the leader and a snelled dry fly on the first dropper loop. In fishing, it is well to move downstream and cast across the stream itself, allowing the flys to travel with the current. If a fish- strikes, he will do so at the point where the end of the line is reached and the fly makes an arc downstream. If no response is forthcoming, retrieve your line in jerks and the dry fly on your dropper will skip on top of the water, attracting fish that otherwise would not strike. manner and returned upstream in jerks and very slowly. This is essen- tial to success. Worm fishing is. of course, easy in early season, as the “Garden Hackle” is & natural food for all trout, and little skill be employed. A few ‘would be to fish down- Fly and spinner | combinations are fished in the same | out of sight as possible, and only hook | the worm once or twice, allowing the greater portion to hang free and wriggle in the current. If a large fish strikes, be sure to give him suffi- cient time to swallow the bait. Late- season fishing with worms calls for a higher degree of skill, and a careless approach to the water will mean failure. Trout fishing is perhaps the most diverting of all sports, and a little knowledge coupled with continued pa- | tience and practice will produce re- sults worthy of your expectations. For ! better trout fishing, handle undersized | fish with care. Wet your hand, grasp | the fish by the jaw only and remove | your hook. Then place, do not drop, |him back in the water for future | sport. Never take more fish than you |actually need and observe stream courtesy in the same manner in which | vou would like to be treated yourself. Buy a license to help out the conser- vation expenses of y local fish | commission, join a sportsman's club | to help protect your sport. and report | fish and game violations that you see {to the warden, as the “fish hog” | should be exterminated. Only Oklahoma Lags 'HE Bureau of Agricultural Ece- nomics, which checks up on the financial results of farm activities, finds, after a survey of last year, that in every State, with the exception of Oklahoma, farm income increased last year. The drought, cutting sharply |into Oklahoma's cotton crop, was | blamed for the failure to make prog- | ress. In this section the average gain in | income over 1933 was set at 16 per | cent. N, ‘Many Lands Send Sugar | YT IS usual to think of the foreign source of sugar used in the United States as being limited to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Phil- ippines, yet fairly large quantities come from other sources. Peru, for instance, has already shipped in over 7,000,000 pounds and Mexico, while shipping little so far this year, is en- titled to ship in about 4,000,000 pounds. Hongkong has shipped in nearly its entire quota of 137,000, while Germany, which may ship in 77 pounds, has already exceeded its quota by 3 pounds. Private Shelter Belts THE Government's shelter belt pro- gram is arousing much more than officlal interest. The Forest Service has had a flood of inquiries from | private individuals within the area to be developed, asking for informa- tion looking to private planting to supplemen? the Federal work. Farm- ers in one county of Wisconsin haves adopted a five-year program of plant- ing which contemplates the setting out of 10,000,000 trees. Guf'Je {0?‘ REEJETJ John Clagett Proctor’s Article on old Wash- ington “Those Were the Happy Days,” by Dick Mans- field ceveccses “Dawn Patrol”. Books and Art. . Stage and Scree! World of Music......... Radio'News and Program: Automobiles .... . Aviation Children’s Page. Highlight#of History.....F- LS s -5 s, F- g e v e g g g g 4 8 7 8 8 9 9