FLY FISHING IN THE YOSEMITE.

By A. Louis Miner, Jr.

A merry party had come for a holiday to the Yosemite, and their camp was established between the north and south domes near the forks of the Merced. Toward the east the Tenajo Canon opened, revealing through its vista of granite crags the highest peak of “Clouds’ Rest,” crowned with eternal snows. Westward, the Sentinel Rock, like a minaret among the domes, pierced the sky.

There were seven in the party, including a heathen from the flowery kingdom, almond-eyed—Ah Yang. His nominal function was to do as he was bid, and serve as man of all work, but in reality he ruled; and ruled with a rod of iron. Yang had been induced to come by motives purely sordid; but the others, aside from seeing the wondrous valley, had various reasons for making the journey.

The Judge came for relaxation. He needed it. For the last dozen years he had devoted himself to reading the morning papers, lunching at his club, and entertaining his friends sumptuously at dinner.

His wife, who, in the levelling atmosphere of camp, came to be styled the Judgess, imagined herself on the verge of a decline, and sought recuperation in the forest. If the Judgess were described as fat and forty, omitting the fair, the description would fall far short of truth. In spite of her ailments, the Judgess would have enjoyed herself in a way, had it not been for the young woman she was chaperoning. This was Madge. Certain young men in San Francisco called her a rattler, and certainly there was nothing slow about her. The chief end of her existence, at home and everywhere, seemed to be the pursuit of fun; to this end she flirted with anything that came in her way, from stray herdsmen on the plains to an English baronet at a Yosemite hotel. When nothing else was at hand, and to the Judgess’ indignation, she flirted with the Judge. With charming zest she played continued games of poker with him till his honor’s purse was far thinner than its owner. The Judge’s admiration for Madge was profound, but after an hour at cards, he would usually remark, “that girl has the devil in her, as it were, bigger than a wolf.”

It is said that all men have a ruling passion. Be that as it may, a passion certainly ruled a worthy clergyman of the company. The men of our generation affected with beetle mania are many, but his Reverence was absolutely devoted to bugs. The Judgess, a zealot to such a degree that Mary of England was but lukewarm in comparison, said that his Reverence valued a butterfly more than a human soul; and Madge insisted that, while he pretended to read his office, he was engaged in dissecting a coleoptera or something.

The Doctor, who was Madge’s unworthy brother, had come with the avowed intention of sketching. All the long way from San Francisco he had been at work with brushes and blotting paper. Often the “prairie schooner,” in which the party travelled, had “lain to” while the Doctor washed in patches of blue and white to represent cloud-effects, or a jagged gray band against streaks of orange, portraying sunrise in the Sierras.

The last member of the party without professional distinction, and familiarly called “Jack,” had also a penchant, though many years had passed since it had been gratified. When they had left the San Joaquin plain and its sluggish rivers oozing their way through mud and reeds, and had climbed into the mountain, a halt was made in a deep canon. Here was a stream indeed. How blithely it danced along, eager to find the Golden Gate and the Pacific! How it sang to Jack of fellow streams near the other ocean! How it whispered of trout streams ahead! Presently a long-cherished fly book was produced and Jack was poring over it. His Reverence, attracted by the little volume, looked over Jack’s shoulder. He was entranced. A volume of ecclesiastical Latin would not have interested him half so much. He began to criticise and expound. Some were perfect. Some were caricatures of diptera. The other members of the party drew around. “Pooh!” said the Doctor, “I hope you don’t expect to catch any trout with those things in Yosemite! Everybody knows that the Merced trout don’t take the fly.” The Doctor went on to say, “that with a common string, such as any grocer would use to tie up a package of tea, a good strong hook, and a worm,” he would catch in the same time, more fish than could all the sportsmen of California, fishing with fancy flies.

The Doctor, like most cynics, was somewhat given to hyperbole.

During the remainder of the journey into the valley, Jack felt himself regarded as the victim of a mild hallucination.

The Doctor could sketch; beetles were awaiting his Reverence’s microscope; flirtation and frolic were dawning on Madge’s horizon; even the Judge and Judgess could get rid of a stone or two avoirdupois if they tried; but poor Jack had come, it appeared, to fish, and there were no fish to catch, or at least to catch with a fly. Such was the tradition, and so the Doctor had asserted, and no one ever disputed the Doctor excepting Yang, the Chinaman.

Our friends had been revelling in the enchantments of the valley a week; had climbed the trails that crept zig-zag up the dizzy heights; had spent hours among the soft mist and rainbows at the first landing of that wonder of the world, the Yosemite Falls; and still Jack had not accomplished the cherished desire of his heart. He had not the moral courage to take from its swaddling clothes his beloved rod (which the Doctor would persist in calling “your fish-pole”). Never had he so longed to cast a fly; but he thought, of the teasing Madge and waited. At best, he was but a poor male creature. Madge, in his place, would have been whipping the stream, with defiance and determination, an hour after her arrival.

His Reverence and the Doctor had arranged to ascend Clouds’ Rest on a Thursday and return next day. Early Thursday morning, before Yang or the birds were stirring, Jack sauntered forth to his morning bath in the icy waters of the river. This Rio, de la Merced, would it prove to him indeed a river of mercy, or a river of humiliation? But what a glorious stream it was! Here it glided through wooded banks, the opposite side black in the shadow of overhanging manzanita, while nearer the rippling waters were checkered with the shadows of the cotton-wood leaves, trembling in the growing light. Further on, the river whirled and eddied around great boulders, resting among the mossy rocks in deep, dark pools, bordered with fern and flecked with patches of lace-like foam. Further still, it wound silently through the sedges, reflecting on its glassy surface the storaied-carved Cathedral Rocks, or the huge mass of El Capitan. Here was an ideal trout stream, but were there trout in it! No doubt, for the Doctor had taken his grocers’ string and a worm and a veritable pole, and after a day’s tramp had returned to camp wet, hungry, in a sulphurous mood, but with four unmistakable trout. These, served up the next morning, were appropriated by the Judgess, and made an excellent appetizer to more abundant bacon and flap-jacks.

Jack had reached that pearl of waters, the Mirror Lake, and was watching the marvellous beauties pictured on its bosom, when suddenly there was a soft plash, the sleeping depths were troubled, a circling ripple crept toward him, and Jack’s pulses bounded. A trout had risen!

Through the dewy chaparral and the fragrant whispering pines, our friend hurried back to camp in a fever of impatience. He tried to help Yang with breakfast, but was told by that dignitary to “giv’ us a rest,” and so humbly retired. He then waked his Reverence. He wakened the Doctor and was greeted by language far from complimentary. He aroused the Judgess, and was pierced with daggers from her eyes while she hurriedly adjusted her teeth.

After breakfast more torturing delays, the Judgess declined to join the mountain party. The others must not think that she feared to ride the mules, for she adored mountain climbing, and the exercise and all that. (This was a dreadful fib, which was probably made use of at her next confession.) Both the Judge and herself were pining for a few refinements of life at the hotel. Without napkins and finger-bowls, life became a burden. The poor Judge had to acquiesce and said: “She wants a little civilization as it were.” Then Jack rebelled. There was a general confusion, in the midst of which Yang began to fire his pistol. This pistol was the idol of his pagan soul, and his frequent salutes the terror of the party. No one dared to interfere. At this time the volley was continued and promiscuous. The Judgess screamed, and having no immediate revenge in the shape of ill-cooked dinners to fear, sharply expostulated. Thereupon Yang, with utmost sang froid, told her to “shut your head” and journey to regions he had probably heard the Doctor name. This was too much. The Judgess climbed into the wagon and stated her opinion of people who permitted such “goings on” and of a priest who allowed a Christian woman to be sworn at. Madge was convulsed with laughter, even his Reverence smiled, while the Judge, poor man, looking as if every brewery on the continent had been burned, snapped his whip, and the wagon was lost to sight beneath the arching sequoias.

It was high noon when the sure-footed mules had arrived and the party fairly started off. Jack waved an adieu with one hand, and with the other reached down his rod from the branches of a live oak. Yang proceeded to dissect a sucker he had caught for bait, saying: “If you fishee, me fishee too, but j’ou no sabee nothing.”

Later in the afternoon Jack stood on the grassy point where the lake narrows into the river. He had adjusted his flies, and everything was in readiness. He paused to watch Yang, who was stationed below on the river, fasten a cubic inch of sucker to his hook, expectorate upon it, turn around three times, and fling it with a tremendous splash into the water. Whether these performances were the result of Oriental superstition, or whether the Chinaman imitated some American example, he did not stop to consider. His long unpractised hand, trembling a little now, had sent the flies far out beneath the shadows of some willows. Another cast was made, and then another. At the fourth there was a rise, and the fish was hooked. The struggle was short but spirited. Yang, abandoning his primitive tackle, was ready with the landing-net, and the fish was killed. As the sport continued, Jack grew calmer, while Yang’s excitement increased. He trembled as if the ague were upon him. His stoicism was laid aside. He laughed, jabbered, and Jack was obliged to address him as the Chinaman had addressed the Judgess. Yang begged to try the rod, and by reason of his imitative faculties might have made good use of it, but he had to content himself with the net.

At last the lengthening shadows deepened into twilight, and the gathering darkness put an end to the sport. The great dome of Mt. Watkins, inverted in the motionless water, had changed from gold to crimson, and from crimson to violet; they paid no heed until the reflection faded, then, looking up, the real mountain, circled by rising mists, seemed to float in the darkening sky, and Jack, with that feeling of perfect content and peace which kings can never know unless they are anglers, stowed away his flies, unjointed his rod, while Yang shouldered the catch.

It was a happy couple that went down the Tenajo canon that evening. The moon smiled upon them; an owl hooted enviously; Jack softly whistled a strain from Schubert, while Yang made the towering rocks echo and re-echo to the joyous banging of the pistol.

The fish were dressed, supper eaten, Yang’s tin dishes washed, and everything was snug for the night. Jack, stretched beneath a giant pine and smoking his evening pipe, was watching the weird play of the firelight in the canopy of foliage above. The Celestial appeared.

“Me heap lonesome, got no more cartridges; you no care; go down hotel stay Chinaboy to-night.”

Unselfish, devoted, and charitable as Yang claimed to be, he could hardly pretend to heroism. The Chinaman was permitted to go, and Jack, appropriating the Judgess’ hammock, turned in. This hammock owed Jack a lodging. All the way across the plains, and up the mountains, and in the valley, that hammock had almost nightly collapsed. Perhaps the Judge did not know how to tie a knot; perhaps the ample physique of the Judgess was too much for any knot, but the thing kept occurring, to the great discomfiture of the Judgess and all the rest of the party. As Jack, with his feet at the fire, and his head on a sack of barley, lay studying the midnight heavens, there would come a shock as of an earthquake. The Judge was a little deaf and after a night or two of experience, would lie just beyond reach of whatever member his better half could disentangle with which to punch him. First, his Reverence would be summoned; but he slept the sleep of the just. Then cries for Ah Yang and the others would follow. Yang was too wise a Chinaman to awaken. Jack sometimes rolled over and kicked the Doctor till he roused, and the good lady hearing his exclamations, claimed his assistance; but sometimes Jack also shed his blankets and relieved the massive limbs from a state of suspension.

With content Jack rolled himself in the hammock. Never had he slept in such profound solitude. The nearest camp was far away down the valley; and towards the east, beyond the mountain-barrier, nothing but the wild desert, and solitary, sage-clad hills of Nevada.

The river murmured over the pebbles, the pines faintly whispered, and that was all. For once he was alone, and oh! the peace of it! 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.

The South Dome was glowing in the ruddy morning light; a flock of blackbirds were piping cheerily; an odor of fried trout and coffee was in the air, and Yang was tugging at the blankets, and saying:

“Come, you heap laze, bleakfast all leddy. Git up!”

What a dinner Yang and Jack had in readiness for the party that night! The Judge and spouse, after much pressing, had come. The lady could not withstand the trout, especially on a Friday. The judicial pair arrived just as Madge and his Reverence raced into camp on the sturdy mules. The Doctor and guide followed. Madge’s cheeks were glowing, her eyes sparkling, and her tongue rattling, as she leaped from her saddle. “Such a time as they had had! His Reverence had been a duck, and the Doctor for once had behaved himself and kept civil.” She gave her hand to the Judgess, but kissed the Judge.

At Yang’s summons, a jovial company sat down to such a table as campers in the Sierras seldom see. Madge was in ecstasies, and even the Judgess expressed approval. There was real damask upon it, with napkins and silver forks and wine from the hotel, with all sorts of garnitures of Yang’s contrivance.

The dinner began, continued, and ended with fish; but fish cooked in every way which Oriental imagination could devise, and camp facilities permit. Even “Simpson’s Fish Dinner,” of seven courses, in Billingsgate, could not surpass it. The Judgess, having disposed of about a dozen fish, remarked that, after all, these were only California trout, and entirely lacked the flavor, as they lacked the beauty, of their Eastern cousins. She thought, however, that Yang’s salad—of cresses from the Merced—was not bad; but wine—even if it was champagne—when sipped from a tin cup, left much to be desired. Alas! Jack had forgotten to borrow the glasses.

All that evening, around the camp-fire, the party listened to an account of the catch. The Doctor did not hesitate to express his entire disbelief in the story. It was his opinion that Jack had hired the Indians to fish for him, and bribed Yang to hold his tongue. Then Yang spoke:

“You think you heap smart. Jack heap sabee how fish, and you no sabee, but me sabee you. Last Fliday you go fish, and when me water horse, see Injun sellee you fish. I sabee you.”

In the peals of laughter which followed, the Doctor went away to his blankets muttering. So the trout the Judgess had enjoyed a week before were not the Doctor’s catching, after all.

A week longer the party lingered in the valley. Madge and his Reverence became quite expert with the fly. The lake seemed to have yielded all its finny treasures to Jack, but the Merced afforded ample sport. Many strings of trout were sent to fellow-campers, and to friends at the hotel; and one little hamper made the long journey by stage and rail to San Francisco.

The “trout-camp” became famous in the valley, and paragraphs noticing the catch appeared in the Stockton Independent, and even in the Sacramento Bee. Jack had accomplished his purpose, and had not come to the Yosemite in vain.

Then the prairie schooner sailed away through the mountains, Madge and his Reverence driving by turns, while the Judge held his ponderous foot on the brake. Yang was mounted on a mustang, while the doctor and Jack trudged through the dust. Frequent halts were made, the Judgess taking her noon-day siesta; the “three fishers,” as she called Madge, his Reverence and Jack, striking out for some neighboring stream. Near the Tuolumne big trees his Reverence took the largest trout of the trip—a four-pounder. On the Tuolumne Biver the three met with fair success; but on the upper waters of the Stanislaus the sport was better. They tarried by the stream winding through that dead little mining town, Big Oak Flat. The banks of the little river were honey-combed by the old placer mining. The population of the Flat wondered to see Madge cast a fly. Even the Chinamen who were still washing for gold, would throw aside their cradles and pans to gaze.

An ancient beau of the town stranded there fifteen years ago (such a man as Bret Harte would have gloried in), became so enamored with the fair angler that he would have followed in her wake; but the fickle object of his admiration eluded her admirer, and the miner sadly headed his mustang toward his mountain home, promising to call “next time he went to ’Frisco.” The schooner dropped anchor in Oakland. The Judge asked all to dine with him that day week—“a sort of a re-union, as it were, you know.” His Reverence hastened to don something more in keeping with his cloth than a blue shirt; Madge threw a kiss to Jack as the Doctor handed her into a carriage; and Jack was left to cross the ferry alone. Yang, however, had not abandoned him. He produced a piece of red paper and asked Jack to write his address upon it.

“I hab one fliend who come get your washee Monday.”

Jack, inured to submission, could not refuse, and Yang’s “fliend” still does his “washee.”

Since the Yosemite excursion Jack has trailed salmon flies on the noble Columbia River, and whipped the California trout streams from the cactus-covered plains of the Mexican border to the glaciers of Mount Shasta, but he has never had such keen enjoyment with the fly as on that afternoon at Mirror Lake.

When he arranges his tackle for a little holiday sport on the Russian River, or the streams among the red woods of Santa Cruz, he sees again the reflected fir-trees and granite dome trembling in the water as the trout leap to his fly; he again hears Yang’s ejaculations and commands. “Fifty-sleven, Jack. Hi! that big fish; fifty-eight. You heap sabee. Hold him tight.’Rusalem, him sabee how swim! Pull like hella, fifty-nine!”

“Trout take some flies because they resemble the real fly on which they feed. They take other flies for no such reason.”—W. C. Prime.

“The oft-repeated quotation, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ has been misconstrued for many a long day, and if I had known early in life its real significance it would hardly have made so doleful an impression. There is no doubt to-day in my mind that this ‘rod’ meant a fishing-rod, and the timely cherishing of it in youth tends to develop the portion of one’s nature to which the former use was entirely innocent.”—Thomas Sedgwick Steele.

“My favorite fly of all is a snipe feather and mouse body.”—“Frank Forester.”

[Original]

31. Cinnamon.

32. Deerfly.

33. Red Fox.

34. Camlet Dun.

35. Governor.

36. Green Drake.

37. Alder.

38. Cheney.

39. Soldier.

40. Hod.

41. Kingdom.

42. Oak Fly.

43. Gray Coflin.

44. Fire Fly.

45. Beaverkill.

46. Yellow May.

47. Black Jun.

48. Quaker.

“Often the whereabouts of a trend is betrayed by a break or a leap from the surface, and the wide-awake angler will make it his business to toss his fly over the spot sooner or later. Sometimes the trout rush at the lure like a flash, leaping clear over it in their eagerness. They are difficult to hook then.”—Charles Hallock.

“No description of the brook trout, that has ever been given, does him justice. It stands unrivalled as a game fish.”—Theodatus Garlick, M.D.

“The best flies to use are imitations of those which are born on the water; for, though trout will often take land flies, and indeed almost any insect you can throw on the water, yet it is on the water-flies which he chiefly depends for his sustenance.”—Francis Francis.

“A trout does not always get the fly when he attempts to; it may be lying against the leader, making it impossible for him to get it in his mouth; you may strike too quickly, taking it out of reach; the strike may be too hard, tearing his mouth. More trout by far are pricked than hooked. Practice only can teach you when to strike; you see a faint gleam under the surface, when you instinctively twitch, to find you have hooked a beauty. Few fishermen can separate force from quickness of motion. Never use your arm in making the strike, only your wrist; then will the difficulty be overcome.”— T. S. Up de Graff, M.D.

“Innocent stranger! Thou who readest these lines! perhaps you never caught a trout. If so, thou knowest not for what life was originally intended. Thou art a vain, insignificant mortal! pursuing shadows! Ambition lures thee, fame dazzles, wealth leads thee on, panting! Thou art chasing spectres, goblins that satisfy not. If thou hast not caught a trout, this world is to thee, as yet, a blank, existence is a dream. Go and weep.”—Thaddeus Norris.

“On one occasion the writer was awakened at a very early hour, when, lo! Mr. Webster, who happened to be in a particularly playful mood, was seen going through the graceful motions of an angler throwing a fly and striking a trout, and then, without a word, disappeared. As a matter of course, that day was given to fishing.”—Lawman’s Life of Webster.