“I am of the opinion that we have had about enough,” said Earl. “I am soaked through, and as I have no other clothes with me, I will have to go to bed until these dry.”
“It will be about time to go to bed anyhow when we get to the hotel, so what’s the difference?” said Sam.
They reached the bridge and shoved the nose of the boat ashore. Tom was waiting with the automobile. They had caught a fine lot of fish. The catch included steelhead, rainbow and salmon trout. The largest was a fine fat fellow, twenty-three inches long, which weighed about six pounds.
“I think that we ought to move the squadron up here for station,” said Bill after they reached the hotel. “It’s much more fun going down the Umpqua River in a boat than being hauled out of the cold waters of the Pacific by the crew of an Artillery tug.”
CHAPTER XXI—THE EUGENE AIRDROME
The three days’ vacation at Roseburg passed much too rapidly for Bill and Bob. They would have liked to stay there for a much longer period. Earl Simmons wanted to get back to Eugene. He liked this form of recreation as much as either Bill or Bob, but his real interest in life was the protection of the forests.
Each day along the Umpqua gave additional surprises to the two young aviators. It seemed that there were no end to the things that the oldtimers in the Northwest woods knew and the tenderfeet from San Francisco had to learn.
The day before they returned to Eugene, they were fishing along the river and casting out into the water from the banks. It required quite a bit of practice before either Bill or Bob could make their dry fly land in the water with the ease and grace of an expert fisherman. Finally they became sufficiently adept to get occasional strikes.
Bill had been fishing a pool which was surrounded by large rocks. Every time that he made a cast, a large fish struck at the fly. Somehow Bill could not hook the fish. The longer this game of “catch if you can” lasted, the more determined Bill became to land that fish. The other members of the party watched him for a long time and then left to fish in other places, but Bill stayed right there.
It was most discouraging not to be able to hook that trout, for from the violence with which it came after the fly, it was sure to be a large one. Bill finally made his best cast of the day. The fly sank lightly onto the water and then, by slightly jerking his rod, Bill made the fly skim across the water. That was too much for the trout. He seized that fly and started out across the river with it. Bill flipped the end of his rod upward to send the hook home and the struggle was on.