Cruisings in the Cascades / A Narrative of Travel, Exploration, Amateur Photography, / Hunting, and Fishing

by G. O. Shields

After supper came the always charming social intercourse around the camp-fire, the exchange of personal notes of the day's sport—the experience meeting, so to speak. No one had misgivings to record so far as the fishing was concerned. Each had enjoyed his full measure of the grand sport, as was evidenced by the display of the several strings of salmon-colored beauties which hung around the camp-fire. There was not a fingerling in the entire catch. No one had caught a trout during the day of less than four ounces in weight, and very few of that size had been taken. The majority of them ranged between half a pound and two pounds, and the numbers were only limited by the amount of work each had done. My friends, being residents and accustomed to this kind of sport whenever they choose to enjoy it, had not cared to fish all day, and consequently had not taken so many as I, but had taken all they wanted.

The only man in the party who had anything to regret in the day's experience was Sam. He had started a large bull elk early in the morning and had followed him several miles, but had not been able to get a favorable shot, though he had twice caught sight of him. We all sympathized deeply with him in his misfortune, for Sam is an expert shot with the rifle, and if he had ever drawn a bead on the game we should have had elk steak on our table at the next meal, sure.

We broke camp early the next morning and prepared to start for home, but decided to fish down the creek till near noon before leaving it. We drove down about a mile, when I alighted and started in, the others distributing themselves at other points along the stream. The trout rose as rapidly and gamily as on the previous day, and I soon had a load in my creel that pulled down uncomfortably. Among them was one old nine-spot which turned the scales at two and a quarter pounds after having been out of the water over two hours. He measured seventeen and a half inches in length.

The captain told me of a certain deep hole where he said an old pioneer made his headquarters, who had taken off two hooks and leaders for him on two different days during the summer. When I reached the hole I recognized it in a moment by the captain's description. It was in a short bend or angle of the creek. On the opposite side from where I stood, and on the lower angle of the square, the channel had cut a deep hole under an overhanging bank, which was covered with willows. These drooped over the water and shaded it nicely. There was a slight eddy there and the surface of the water was flecked with bits of white foam which came from the rapids just above. What a paradise for a wary old trout!

I stopped about forty feet above the hole and put on one of the largest hoppers in my box; then I reeled out ten or fifteen feet of line and cast into the foot of the rapid. As the current straightened out my line I reeled off more of it and still more until it floated gently and gracefully down into the dark eddy, and when within two feet of the edge of the bank there was a whirl, a surge, a break in the water, as if a full-grown beaver had been suddenly frightened from his sun bath on the surface and had started for the bottom. I saw a long, broad gleam of silvery white, my line cut through the water, and the old-timer started for his bed under the bank.

I struck at the proper instant, and, bending my little split bamboo almost double, brought him up with a short turn. He darted up the stream a few feet, and again turning square about started for his den. I snubbed him again. This time he shot down the creek, and, turning, made another dive for his hiding place. Again I gave him the butt, but this time he was determined to free himself, and with a frantic plunge he tore the hook from his mouth and disappeared in his dark retreat.

My heart sank within me, when I realized that he was gone. He was truly a monster, fully two feet long, and I think would have weighed four pounds or over. I reeled up and made two or three more casts in the same hole. His mate, a comely-looking fellow, but not nearly so large, came out once and smelt of the bait but declined to take it. He had evidently seen enough to convince him that it was not the kind of a dinner he was looking for. I fished down the creek for an hour and then returned and tried the old fellow again, but he had not yet forgotten his recent set-to with me, and refused to come out. I presume he is still there, and will probably reign for some years to come, the terror of tackle owners, unless someone gets a hook firmly fastened in his jaw, and has tackle sufficiently derrick-like to land him; and whoever that lucky individual may be, I congratulate him in advance. My tackle would have held him if I had been fortunate enough to get the proper cinch on him, and the only thing I have to regret in thinking of the trip, is that I was not so fortunate.

We had enough, however, without him. We took home forty-eight trout that weighed, when dressed, sixty pounds, and of all the many days I have spent fishing in the many years long gone, I never enjoyed any more intensely, never had grander sport than in these two days on Big Spring creek.

It has been stated that the mountain trout lacks the game qualities of our Eastern brook trout. I have not found it so. They are quite as gamy, as vicious in their fighting, and as destructive to fine tackle as the brook trout, the only perceptible difference being that they do not fight so long. They yield, however, only after a stubborn resistance, sufficiently prolonged to challenge the admiration of any angler. I have caught a number of two and three pounders that required very careful and patient handling for twenty to thirty minutes before they could be brought to the landing net.

There are various other streams along the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad which afford almost equally as fine sport as the Bitter Root, and some of them that are even more picturesque and beautiful. In fact, nearly every stream reached by the road, between Billings and Puget Sound, teems with these graceful beauties. By leaving the road at almost any point on the Rocky Mountain or Pend d'Orielle Divisions and pushing back into the mountains twenty to one hundred miles, the enterprising angler may find streams whose banks have seldom been profaned by the foot of a white man; where an artificial fly has seldom or never fallen upon the sparkling blue waters, and yet where millions of these beautiful creatures swarm, ready to rush upon anything that reaches the surface of their element bearing the least resemblance to their natural food, with all the fearless enthusiasm of untainted and unrestrained nature. In these wilder regions the tourist will also find frequent use for his rifle, for elk, bear, deer, mountain sheep, and other large game may yet be found in reasonable quantities in all such undisturbed fastnesses.