Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

412 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFThind the thing's head. A hellgrammite Is so toughand tenacious of life that two or more fish may becaught with one of them. Like the crayfish, itshould be kept off the bottom by a float or by movingit frequently. The mature corydalis fly canbe used as bait, after plucking off its wings, but itit much softer than the larva and does not livelong on the hook.From early spring until June, or even July, itis easy to get "stick bait" (the larva of the caddisfly) in almost any trout stream. This little whitegrub or creeper, with short black thorax and blackhead armed with nippers, makes for itself a cylindricalcase out of tiny twigs, bits of leaf, sand, etc.,stuck together with silk that it secretes, the wholebeing a good example of protective resemblance,for it looks just like a broken piece of dead twig.Caddis worms, hidden in these cases, strew the bottomof still shallows at the sides of streams, alongivith trash collected there by the eddies. Pinch offone end of the case, draw the worm out by itshead, and impale it on a small trout hook. Fishtake it very greedily.Various other aquatic larvae, such as those oistone flies, drakes, and water beetles, will be foundin spring and summer under stones and sticks, orattached to them, in shallow water with rocky orAlmost any creeper that you findgravelly bottom.in such a place isgood bait.Throughout the hot summer months the best ofall live baits for trout are certain species of grasshoppers.Some of these may be captured even aslate as October. There is a little, hard-bodied,green grasshopper, active and hard to catch, that appearsearly in the season and Is a good fish lureat that time; but the later green ones are too softand pulpy to stay on a hook, and they seldom bringa strike, anyway. Then there are the large, slowflying,dry-looking locusts that become so numerouslate in summer—they are worthless. What thefish want, and will go after, are the medium-sized