How to Fish

Most anglers consider the trout a clever creature, cool, resourceful and important. Anglers are mistaken. Trout are nervous rather than intelligent. Only terror, causing them to dart and lurk, makes them fun to catch. Puzzled, dejected, perpetually alarmed by trifles, U. S. trout were unaware last week of a new book which materially increases the dangers of their station.*

Just Fishing is a compendium of ways & means of catching trout, bass, pike and lesser U. S. fish, annotated with incidents from Author Ray Bergman's copious fishing notebooks. Unlike most expert anglers. Author Bergman considers worm-fishing for trout permissible, particularly ! for beginners. He starts his book with a chapter telling how to do it. An expert worm fisherman told him how to bait the hook: " 'Catch hold of the skin at two places . . . so the ends will wiggle. Some fellers claim that the point of the hook showin' scares the fish but that's all wrong.'. . ." When a trout bites, " 'lower the tip of the pole a minute. . . . Now lift the tip up again easy . . . then . . . strike quick!' "

Approval of worm-fishing is not Author Bergman's only angling heresy. He considers wet fly fishing "as a finished art . . . much harder to master than dry fly fishing. ' Quoting directly from his field notes, Author Bergman tells about nights spent fishing Brandy Brook in the Adirondacks, days in which he did no fishing at all but sat watching a small stretch of stream to find out how its trout acted. Three years later he caught a trout in this part of the brook for the first time. Profoundly observant. Author Bergman caught trout on a wet fly by allowing it to sink, judging the depth by counting to a certain number, then striking on the supposition that a fish had taken his fly. Also extraordinary is his method of fishing a stream with a gft. leader, with three flies: nymph (to represent larva) at the bottom, a wet fly above it. with a Royal Coachman at the top to serve as a marker for a strike at one of the lower flies. Most fishermen will find that they have tried one or more of Author Bergman's tricks with wet flies but few will find that they have tried them all. Author Bergman believes that old bedraggled flies are generally most appetizing, that trimming flies and thinning out the hackles make them more efficient.

In his chapter on dry fly fishing. Author Bergman tells how to make slack line casts, how to study a stream: "Sometimes the water may look flat and uninteresting but close examination will reveal many small holes scattered here and there usually in each of these holes will be found trout. . . . No matter how shallow the water may be, it is always wise to fish where there are rocks of any size. . . Always the short cast is preferable to a long one. . . ."

A sport conducive to reflection and repose, angling has produced many books, few good ones. Expert fly-fishermen regard George Michel Lucien La Branche, rich Manhattan stockbroker, as their foremost authority. His Dry Fly ahd Fast Water is an angler's bible. Just Fishing is a more humble but equally expert testament and textbook which will teach beginners, enlighten seasoned anglers. Author Bergman was persuaded to write it by friends who admired his writings in Field & Stream and Hunting & Fishing, of which he is fishing editor. Many anglers who buy their flies at William Mills & Son in Manhattan know Author Bergman without knowing his name. He sells fishing tackle, commutes to Rockland County, where he does some of his angling, all his writing. He will appear in a Grantland Rice cinema about fly-fishing which will be made next month.

Mule Heaven

Last spring Archer Huntington, author and animal lover,* made an announcement that brought a bright gleam into the eye of many a poor southern Negro. He would, he said, pay $20 apiece for every down-&-out mule delivered to his estate near Camden, S. C. There he would pasture them, insure them a peaceful old age. Suddenly South Carolina was overrun with mule traders. Decrepit animals which were able to do but little work in exchange for their keep found themselves prodded along the roads to Camden. From North Carolina. Georgia and Alabama they came to swamp kind Mr. Huntington. to block his gate, to fill his ears with the din of their braying. Last week he cried for mercy. Said he:

"The plan ... is not yet sufficiently formed to decide how many mules can be purchased and will not be until the coming year. The buying will be limited to South Carolina."

*JUST FISHING--Ray Bergman-- Penn ($5).

*His seagoing yacht is named Rosinante, for Don Quixote's famed horse.

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