Flies or worms?

Tell me, what do you use? Flies or worms? Or something in between?

I'd like to know, just in case I am shut out this spring and have to change my time-honored, if tortured, method of attracting brook trout.

The fishing season has finally arrived, and I plan to catch some trout this spring. There is some fast-moving water a half-mile from the cabin, so I am optimistic.

But there is a problem. I never catch trout anymore.

Is it because I use worms? The lean and attractive trout worm . . . the formidable night crawler . . . the hardworking dilly . . . .

My belief in the worm goes way back. And I mean WAY back.

In my formative years (and I won't get into semantics about whether I did justice to the term of "formative"), I fished small brooks with worms.

It was in rural New Jersey, north of New York City. (It sounds contradictory, but brooks and trees did predate the oil refineries.)

There were plenty of trout in this area, near the Palisades north of the George Washington Bridge.

The reason there were many brook trout was that no adults would fish the streams. The land was owned by Mafia henchman. No joke. These guys, with five o'clock shadows and Cadillacs which at that time were the length of Rhode Island, would yell, scream and sometimes even point what appeared to be guns to get strangers to leave.

Call them paranoid if you will, but honchos of organized crime did get whacked in their homes if they were not careful.

Adults feared going on this hundred-acre property. Kids, and I had perhaps put in a decade at that time, hardly knew what the Mafia was.

So our posse of poachers caught a great number of brook trout, on worms. The fish were so hungry that they greeted our inept band of anglers like goldfish welcoming the parents back after a two-week holiday.

But the Mafia guys had nasty dogs. And that wasn't just because they wanted to intimidate competitors at Kennel Club events. They needed the hounds to bark to alert them, and harass anyone who came onto their land - perhaps with firearms.

My band of naive know-nothing friends ignored the threat of the dogs, because even if a capo saw a kid he wouldn't bother launching an assault.

But one day they did let out the dogs. My (one-time) pal, Buddy Sherman, got away by scaling a fence.

I was not so fast. I hesitate to say I was "mauled" but the huge German shepherds bit and scratched, drawing blood in numerous locations of my 70 pound body.

My parents were alarmed when I returned home, and they took me to the hospital. But the local police evidently didn't call the Mafia dog pounds in those days to check to see if these attack animals had received their appropriate shots, so all I got was some surface medication. No rabies shots, thankfully, just an order to go home and take two aspirin.

End of story: Willie Moretti, owner of the estate, was rubbed out on the Brooklyn Docks in the '60s. His wooded acreage was sold to the Catholic Diocese, and became a high school for girls, Our Lady of the Holy Angels.

Me? I recovered but never caught many trout again.

Still, I am in sweet possession of my memories of catching 16 to 20-inch brookies on nature's own worm.

I will be using worms this spring, hoping to catch lunkers - but praying that I don't hear charging dogs in the background.

But please comment below - do you use worms or flies - and why?

I may need some good advice.

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