Trout

“ I have taken trout out of water that would have pulverized a golf ball in five minutes. The fiercer the current—the greater the tumult—the more cruel and savage the rocks, the better place it is for trout.
Neither do I remember that we took anything in the Shelburne above Irving Lake, for it was a good deal like the stillwater, with only a gentle riffle here and there. Besides, the day had become chill, and a mist had fallen upon this lonely world—a wet white, drifting mist that was closely akin to rain. On such a day one does not expect trout to rise, and is seldom disappointed. ”

“ And when the beautifully browned fish were eaten, the pink meat looking so dainty, every one declared that when it came to sweetness, the trout raised in the clear cold waters of Lake Superior had no rival.
But then that is what hungry campers are saying up in Maine, in the Adirondacks, and in various other places where trout abound—they are always the finest in the whole world, when you have your appetite along with you and the odor of supper is wafted to you on the wind that shakes the foliage of the pine and hemlock. ”

“ Can your trout fishing beat that?"
"Every man after his own heart," replied the "Chief," "but for me, give me the trout. You rise early on such a morning as this and slip off into the canyon. Far away on all sides rise the mountain peaks, their snow caps jauntily adjusted and their cloaks of ice drawn close about their shoulders. Then the balsam-scented air, and the dew-laden bushes along the chattering little stream as it flows over a chaos of broken granite or works itself into a boiling froth, only to jump headlong into a quiet green pool. Can you beat it?" ”

“ The woods are calling to us and the waters tempt us. The trout are jumping in the pool just beyond the big stump, and a deer is feeding in the meadow yonder. Great herons fly lazily along the shores of the bay, or go on frog-hunting expeditions among the rushes. Surely, there is something better to do than to loll on the porch, and the first important task is to interview those impertinent trout. Leaders are brought out and soaked, flies selected, the Leonard rod jointed and everything made ready. ”

“ By the time the sanguine sportsman has clambered over the rails in the third meadow, the line of hope has run out from the winch of imagination, and he has mentally struck that trout, played it, brought it to the rim of the net, played it yet again, and finally, after a battle heroic in its every detail, beheld it gracefully curved in the friendly meshes, and transferred to a grassy couch, to be the envy of his club and the boast of his family, even to the third and fourth generation. ”

“ Often the trout are caught as fast as the hook can be baited, and looking through the ice-hole in the track of a sunbeam, you see a mass of tails, silver fins, bright eyes, and crimson spots, a perfect shoal of fish, and truly beautiful the crimson-spotted creatures look, lying still and dead on the blue ice under the sunshine. Sometimes two men bring home 60 lbs. of trout as the result of one day's winter fishing. It is a cold and silent sport, however. How a cook at home would despise our scanty appliances, with which we turn out luxuries. ”

“ I had no landing net so I gently slid the almost exhausted fish onto a gravel bar and as I did so I experienced one of those delightful thrills which comes to a fellow’s lot but once or twice in a life-time. But it was not because I had captured three at a strike, for I have done that before and since, but I thrilled because they were not only a new and strange kind of trout, but they were of the color and sheen of newly minted gold. Never before had any man seen such trout. ”

“ Grace’s mind instantly turned to what the foreman of the “Lazy J” ranch had said about the golden trout in the High Sierras.
“Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had discovered a pool of those live nuggets!” she cried, throwing herself down and gazing into the pool, on which the sunlight shone, mirroring her own face and the rocks behind her on its surface.
“They aren’t golden trout at all; they are mountain trout, and oh, what beauties! I must tell Hippy and have him get a mess for us. I reckon that golden trout story is a myth. ”

“ All of a family, yet each possesses its own features and has the impress of its own personality. A trout stream almost invariably meanders along the valley, sometimes finding its way through meadows of long lush grass, Alpine in its greenness, sometimes flowing among overhanging woods where the murmur of the waters mingles with the rustling of the leaves or the deeper, more melancholy note of the fir boughs. ”

“ But here is no pastoral brook meandering through meadowy lowlands; it runs with a gush and a tinkle; even in hot days, when the current is slender, there is always spirit and vigour about it. For an angler there is something even better: trout lurk in some of the deeper holes. ”

“ Given a single-handed split cane rod, fine tackle, and plenty of fresh run sea trout in a Highland river, and you have the prospect of as good a day's sport as any you ever enjoyed. You never know what the next cast will produce; it may be a half-pounder or something twelve times as big.
The worst of sea trout, from the angler's point of view, is that they are rather gregarious and keep in shoals; they are always anxious to move up to the still deeps they love so well, and you may just miss the shoal—they may be just above your water. ”

“ The best trout rivers of Canada are troublesome to reach, difficult to ascend, and seldom attempted by any but the salmon fisher. To the latter, the trout, attractive as he seems to us, is a trial and a nuisance. Abundant and voracious, he often rushes in advance of the lordly salmon, seizes the fly, and then discovering his mistake, by his struggles disturbs the pool, ruffles the fisherman’s temper, and frightens the larger game from its equanimity. ”

“ Here the affluents of the Novarro River are drawn together like threads of lace; and the first trout stream leaps and eddies in the deep defiles on its way to the ocean. There is no use of fumbling in an outside pocket for fish-hooks. The stream has a fishy look; but that band of rancheria Indians, who have gone into summer camp on a sand-bar, will settle the trout question for the next ten miles. They pop their heads out of a round hole in one of the wigwams like prairie dogs, and seem to stand on their hind legs, with the others pendent, as if just going to bark. ”

“ We proceeded up the stream, Eddie and I ahead, the guides pushing the loaded canoes behind. It was the brook of our forefathers—such a stream as might [Pg 178] flow through the valley meadows of New England, with trout of about the New England size, and plentiful. Lively fellows, from seven to nine inches in length, rose two and three at almost every cast. We put on small flies and light leaders and forgot there were such things as big trout in Nova Scotia. It was joyous, old-fashioned fishing—a real treat for a change. ”

“ Few good trout streams flow past the front door of a summer hotel. It is necessary, as a rule, even on Prince Edward Island, to journey beyond the dooryard before coming to the favourite haunts of that festive fish. The walking is good? Yes, but the Preacher found a way that beats walking all to death. Have a man at the hotel where you are stopping, who keeps his own team and coachman; who counts that day lost in which he catches no trout; who is intelligent, genial, unselfish; who invites you daily to share his buggy in trips to streams that swarm with fish. ”

“ Good for the trout because they are never caught, and good for the sportsman who knows their ways, though they be like the “way of the serpent upon the rock”—past finding out. The instinct of the trout is akin to the sense of the human sucker, and I have sometimes wondered if they did not entertain a pretty fair idea of our lunatic asylums, and gain the impression that at certain seasons there was an exodus ”

“ Was it such a night as this that tempted men to leave their fellows for a hermitage? Such visions came to him as seldom visit men beneath a roof. At last he slept, and dreamed of the first trout he had killed in a little New England meadow-brook. He was filling a creel with bass from a fair Wisconsin lake. He was in a plunger off Montauk Point, striking the blue-fish. He was trolling for pike through Champlain, and casting a fly from a canoe on Adirondack waters. ”

“ They preferred to roll rather than to sail, because they were in a hurry. They rolled north rather than west, because the best trout stream in North America lies between Chicago and Hudson’s Bay. Who has not heard of the famous Nepigon? What angler has not dreamed of battling with the giant trout which inhabit its waters? For months the Business Man, the Doctor and the Preacher had been examining their rods, looking over tackle, selecting flies, laying plans and looking forward with feverish anxiety to August first. ”

“ Everybody rode down to eat his trout, and make love in the dark shades of his mirrored lagoon; and, at last, in self-defence, he added a room or two to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-garden, and set a price on his trout dinners. The traveller, now-a-days, who has not dined at Barhydt’s, with his own champagne cold from the tarn, and the white-headed old settler ‘gargling’ Dutch about the house in his maniform vocation of cook, ostler, and waiter, may as well not have seen Niagara. ”

“ Luckily there are no gamekeepers here, though to be sure there is a close season for the trout. One magnificent trout, weighing upward of 30 Ibs., was caught in the lake recently, and we feasted on a boiled trout on board which had been dried and smoked by the cook, and was as big as a good-sized salmon. (The trout, of course, not the cook.)
We are now reaching the far end of the lake. The hillsides are here heavily wooded, and have a softer aspect than the terrible bare desolation which marks the rugged seams and iron ridgy bars of "The Remarkables." ”

“ TROUT AND FISHING-RODS
Trouting streams in this country and in Western America have distinct peculiarities. Some years ago I was rambling up Glen Spean, and along the heathery and rocky banks of the River Treig with an American friend, who had spent much of his life in surveying the Western Territories of the United States. ‘What a fine stream,’ he remarked, ‘not to have trout in it!’ I assured him there were plenty of trout in all the streams of the district. ”

“ This trout lives everywhere, and is to be met with in the lakes and rivers in Vancouver Island, in all streams flowing into Puget’s Sound, and away up the western sides of the Cascades. Crossing to the eastern side, and descending into the valley of the Columbia, again he puts in an appearance. Climb the western slope of the Rocky Mountains up to the summit, 7,000 feet above the sea-level, there too he lives—always hungry and voracious. These trout are very delicious, varying from eight ounces up to three pounds in weight. ”

“ Ben's eyes were fixed upon a slender brook not far away that threaded its silvery way down a gentle incline from the midst of underbrush.
"I wonder if we can't catch some trout," he said. "Don't they have trout in these mountains?"
"To be sure they do; and the best in the world," said Bradley briskly. "The California mountain trout can't be beat." ”

“ On the pier was a lad of fourteen or fifteen, holding up for inspection a fish that was, indeed, big, but to northern eyes gave no indications of being a trout. It was a giant “big-month” bass, and the lad’s assertion that it weighed twelve pounds seemed quite probable. It seems ridiculous to call the handsome speckled denizens of clear, mountain streams, and the brown, ugly frequenter of the muddy St. Johns by the same name, but there is no law forbidding such trespass. When we reach the coast we find the weakfish has also been transformed into a trout. ”

“ I felt sorry for that trout as I slipped her into my creel; they are such short-sighted fish—I’ll not say why—but they exact the angler’s care, and carry out the simile admirably. Had I offered that trout a worm for breakfast, the chances are ten to one she would have inquired whether I took her for a sucker. But it occurs to me all at once that I am on delicate ground—the current runs five miles an hour, the water is above my knees and the rocks are slippery; to fall is easy as—lying; the fate of our common ancestor is a warning. ”

“ The streams that run into Lake Superior are alive with trout, and next summer I propose to go up there and roast until I have so thoroughly saturated my system with trout that the trout bones will stick out through my clothes in every direction and people will regard me as a beautiful toothpick holder.
Still there will be a few left for those who think of going up there. All I will need will be barely enough to feed Albert Victor and myself from day to day. People who have never seen a crowned head with a peeled nose on it are cordially invited to come over and see us during office hours. ”

“ You might almost as readily find a hart on Harthope, or a wild cat at Catslack, or a wolf at Wolf-Cleugh, as catch three stone-weight of trout in Meggat-water. {6} The days of guileless fish and fabulous draughts of trout are over. No sportsman need take three large baskets to the Gala now, as Lauder did, and actually filled them with thirty-six dozen of trout. The modern angler must not allow his expectations to be raised too highly by these stories. Sport has become much more difficult in these times of rapidly growing population. ”