THE TROUT BROOK
tapered if you like. The flies—here's the main thing—should be the best, and of the smallest brook trout pattern. Next year, when I make up my supply, I'll pack fully two hundred, and they'll be the dearest-priced flies, for they are none too good.
Oh, I must say a word about cooking and eating trout before I close. I've tried them in all styles, and the best way, I think, is when they're roasted over a camp fire on a little crotch stick, one prong in the head and the other in the tail. And the worst way, I think, is when they're fried in a pan with bad butter or poor lard.
Blake and I are in our glory. Our only displeasure is in knowing that our perspiring city friends are not as comfortable. The days here are warm and bright—not hot and close—and the nights cool and clear, so that we live merrily all the time.
I went a few hundred yards down the stream in front of the camp to two great bowlders, one morning, and there, during a little sun shower, took a Salvelinus fontinalis that weighed just a little over two pounds and a quarter. He rose to a pinkish, cream-colored fly, with little brown spots on the wings. I forget its name, but it's one of the six really good ones I referred to. I decided to keep the large captive alive, so I took off one of the cords tied about my trousers at the bottoms (I never wear wading boots in warm weather), put it through his gill, and tied the other end to a submerged tree-root. Later, Mr. Trout was lodged in a small box, with bars tacked over the top, and placed under a spout running from an old mill race. He was a big specimen—large enough to saddle and ride to town, the cook said. And pretty—as pretty as a gathering of lilacs and giant ferns decked with wintergreen berries.