The Tent Dwellers

by Albert Bigelow Paine

It was beautiful going, down Sand Brook. There was plenty of water and the day was perfect. There is nothing lovelier in the world than that little limpid stream with its pebbly riffles and its sunlit pools. Sometimes when I think of it now I am afraid that it is no longer there in that far still Arcady, or that it may vanish through some enchantment before I can ever reach it again. Indeed as I am writing here to-day I am wondering if it is really there—hidden away in that quiet unvisited place, when no one is there to see it, and to hear it sing and whisper—if anything is anywhere, unless some one is there to see and hear. But these are deep waters. I am prone to stumble, as we have seen, and somehow my tallest waders never take me through.

I have already said, and repeated, I think, that there is no better trout fishing than in the Shelburne. The fish now were not quite so heavy as they had been higher up, but they were very many. The last half of the miracle of the loaves and fishes would not have been necessary here had the multitudes been given some tackle and a few cans of bait. When we were a little above Kempton Dam, Del pointed out the first place familiar to him. The woods were precisely the same—the waters just as fair and fruitful—the locality just as wild; but somehow as we rounded that bend a certain breath of charm vanished. The spell of perfect isolation was gone. I had the feeling that we had emerged from the enchanted borders of No Man's Land—that we were entering a land of real places, with the haunts and habitations of men.

Kempton Dam itself had been used to catch logs, not so long ago, and Eddie had visited it on a previous occasion. He still had a fond memory of a very large trout—opinions differed a trifle as to its exact size—which he had taken there in a certain pool of golden water, and it was evident from his talk that he expected to take that trout again, or some member of its family, or its ghost, maybe, immediately upon arrival.

It certainly proved an attractive place, and there were any number of fish. They were not especially large, however. Even the golden water was fruitful only as to numbers. We waded among the rocks or stood on the logs, and cast and reeled and netted and returned fish to the water until we were fairly surfeited. By that time the guides had the camp ready, and as it was still early we gave them the rods and watched the sport.

Now a fly-casting tournament at home is a tame entertainment when one has watched the fishing of Nova Scotia guides. To see a professional send a fly sailing out a hundred feet or so in Madison Square Garden is well enough, and it is a meritorious achievement, no doubt, but there is no return except the record and the applause. To see Del the Stout and Charles the Strong doing the same thing from that old log dam was a poem, a picture, an inspiration. Above and below, the rushing water; overhead, the blue sky; on either side, the green of June—the treetops full of the setting sun. Out over the foaming current, skimming just above the surface, the flies would go sailing, sailing—you thought they would never light. They did not go with a swish and a jump, but seemed noiselessly to drift away, as if the lightly swinging rod had little to do with the matter, as if they were alive, in fact, looking for a place to settle in some cozy nook of water where a trout would be sure to be. And the trout were there. It was not the empty tub-fishing of a sportsman's show. The gleam and splash in the pool that seemed remote—that was perhaps thirty yards away in fact—marked the casting limit, and the sharp curve of the rod, and the play to land were more inspiring than any measure of distance or clapping of hands.

Charles himself became so inspired at length with his handsome fishing that he made a rash statement. He declared that he could take five trout in fifteen minutes. He offered to bet a dollar that he could do it. I rather thought he could myself, for the fish were there, and they were not running over large. Still, it was no easy matter to land them in that swift water, and it would be close work. The show would be worth a dollar, even if I lost. Wherefore, I scoffed at his boast and took the bet.

No stipulations were made as to the size of the trout, nor the manner in which they should be taken, nor as to any special locality. It was evident from our guide's preparation that he had evolved certain ideas of his own in the matter. Previously he had been trying to hook a big fish, but it was pretty evident that he did not want any big fish now. There was a little brook—a run-around, as it were—that left the main water just below the dam and came in again at the big pool several hundred yards below. We had none of us touched this tumbling bit of water. It was his idea that it would be full of little trout. He wanted something he could lift out with no unnecessary delay, for time that is likely to be worth over six cents a minute is too expensive to waste in fancy sportsmanship. He selected a short rod and put on some tiny flies. Then he took his position; we got out our watches and called time.

Now, of course, one of the most uncertain things in life to gamble on is fishing. You may pick your place, your day and your time of day. The combination may seem perfect. Yet the fact remains that you can never count with certainty on the result. One might suppose that our guide had everything in his favor. Up to the very moment of his wager he had been taking trout about as rapidly as he could handle them, and from water that had been fished more or less all the afternoon. He knew the particular fly that had been most attractive on this particular day and he had selected a place hitherto unfished—just the sort of a place where small trout seemed likely to abound. With his skill as an angler it would not have surprised me if he had taken his five trout and had more than half the time to spare.

I think he expected to do that himself. I think he did, for he went at it with that smiling sang froid with which one does a sleight of hand trick after long practice. He did not show any appearance of haste in making his first cast, but let the flies go gently out over a little eddying pool and lightly skim the surface of the water, as if he were merely amusing himself by tantalizing those eager little trout. Yet for some reason nothing happened. Perhaps the little trout were attending a party in the next pool. There came no lively snap at those twitching flies—there was not even a silver break on the surface of the water.

I thought our guide's smile faded the least trifle, and that he let the flies go a bit quicker next time. Then when nothing, absolutely nothing, happened again, his look became one of injured surprise. He abandoned that pool and stepping a rock or two downstream, sent the flies with a sharp little flirt into the next—once—twice—it was strange—it was unaccountable, but nothing—not a single thing happened again. It was the same with the next pool, and the next.