Days in the Open

by Lathan A. Crandall

At four o’clock the next morning we are awakened by the chugging of the tug. Day is just breaking, and the lake is as smooth as the floor of a bowling alley. Three hours later we are tied up to a sandy beach on the west shore of the lake, and vacation has really begun. Not a house is to be seen except two or three in the distance on the opposite shore. Ten rods away, to the north, a mountain stream comes rushing down the canyon and goes billowing far out into the lake. At the south end of the beach a giant mass of bare rock lifts itself into the air, while the mountains are all about us. Here and there a snowy peak looms into the blue. The lake dimples and smiles under a cloudless sky, and murmurs a gentle welcome as it laps upon the gravelly beach. This is a beautiful world, and nowhere more beautiful than on the shores of the Kootenay.

[Original]

What about the fishing? In view of the dictum recently rendered by certain inordinately good people and recorded in one of our great religious weeklies, that question is clearly out of order. It has been decided by those who have no question as to their infallibility that it is wicked to catch fish. (Poor Peter! How thoroughly ashamed of himself he would be were he living in this day of ethical enlightenment.) Let it be understood before proceeding further, that our action has historic precedent in the well-known case of the boy and the woodchuck. We had to fish. We were forty miles from the base of supplies. The Doctor and the Junior and the girls and the head of the house and the Chinaman and the Preacher must eat or perish. As each and all manifested a strong prejudice against perishing, some one must fish. The Preacher offers himself as a hesitating violator of that high-toned, transcendental morality which places fishing among the mortal sins, and the Doctor aids and abets him.

Just here listen to a word of advice: If you will fish, provide yourself with a friend so unselfish that he will joyously perjure himself by declaring that he does not care anything about the sport and prefers to row the boat. It is important to have good tackle, carefully selected flies, a rod that will stand strain and a line that runs freely; but the sine qua non is a companion whose generosity is so much greater than your own that he will insist upon turning himself into a motor for your benefit. Such a man is the Doctor. May all blessings rest upon him! Those golden hours on the Kootenay were enriched by his companionship, and his unselfishness materially increased the Preacher’s score.

Now we are off. The trunks have been unpacked, the “girls” are tidying up the boat, the Junior is busy floating his ships from the shore, and the row-boat, with the Doctor at the oars and the Preacher waving his rod, is rounding the point of rocks to the south. Repeated casts of the flies find nothing doing. At last there is a swirl and a tug. But what sort of a trout is it at the end of the line? He pulls and plunges, but there is never a jump nor any indication of a purpose to break water. It is not much of a fight, anyhow, and the net lifts in a fish the like of which neither Doctor nor Preacher has ever seen before. Large head, enormous mouth, brownish back and sides with yellowish belly, he looks something like a salt water ling. And that was the sum total of the morning’s catch. Not much slaughter of the innocents about that! We ventured to cook that unclassified victim, and he was not bad as food for the starving. Later on the Doctor learned from the hermit—of course we had a hermit—that the stranger is called a “squaw-fish,” although it is said that the proper name is “squawk-fish,” so called from the noise it makes when caught.

Is this all that the far-famed Kootenay can furnish? Must it be told to future generations that two able-bodied men spent a half-day of strenuous toil and only captured a plebeian squaw-fish? Well, tell it if you must, but when you get started keep right on and tell the whole story. That afternoon we deserted the calm water along the shore and struck out for the tumbling billows made by Midge Creek as it rushes into the lake. Then and there the sport began. The trout were at home and receiving callers. The gaudy “Parmachene Belle” had no sooner struck the water than snap—whizz—jump—splash—landing net—two-pounder, and then it all began over again. We had struck our gait.

What fishing! Did you ever catch a rainbow trout? If not, you have yet to live. He is a combination of gymnast and dynamo. When communications have been established, he at once begins a series of acrobatic performances which leave no doubt as to his agility. The writer counted twelve jumps made by one fish before he was brought to net. These were not little disturbances of the surface of the water, just enough to give notice of his whereabouts—but clean leaps. How high? How would three feet do? If that’s too much, take off an inch. Especially fascinating was the sport after sundown, when the dusk was upon the face of the waters. Then, with a “white miller” as lure, we circled the broken water, knowing not where the fly lighted, but certain that it would be seen and craved by some hungry trout.

But it was in the early morning that the most wonderful phenomena were seen. The writer pledges his word that if he had not been there he would not believe it (the reader is not expected to credit the statement), but the Preacher, on divers and sundry occasions, left his berth before sunrise and went out to fish. The grey is in the eastern sky, and the lake motionless. Nothing breaks the silence but the roar of the creek or the sharp challenge of a chipmunk. Rowing slowly along the shore, the world seems as fresh as if newly born. A tip-up teeters along the beach, a thrush sings his morning hymn of praise among the trees on the mountain side, and now the sun peeps over a notch in the eastern hills. Did you ever see more exquisite colouring than the brown of the moss upon that rock, or the delicate shades of green in that clump of trees? The fish are not early risers, or, if they are up, have not found their appetites: but what matters it? Here are peace and beauty; God’s good world at its best.