Days in the Open

by Lathan A. Crandall

It will be enough to say that we made the regulation trip and were quite orthodox in the matter of admiration. The moments of enthusiasm over the scenery were interspersed with periods of deep reflection; for somewhere along the course of the steamer we had decided to stop off for a stay of some weeks. Where should it be? We had started with a notion that the choice would lie between Pantanguishene and Parry Sound; but the former place failed to make a strong appeal, and at Parry Sound there were too many people and too few fish.

On our way down we had touched at Manitowaning.

When and where had we heard of this place? Carefully overhauling the odds and ends stowed away in the chambers of memory, we came at last upon a glowing account, given us some years before by a fisherman friend, of a vacation spent at Manitowaning. Much of what he said had been forgotten, but not his praise of the fishing. When the captain of the steamer assured us that there was a comfortable hotel in the little village, the matter was settled, and Manitowaning it was. It may be just as well to exhibit the “fly in the ointment” at once, and have done with it. The hotel had a bar, and the drinking and the drunkenness went far towards marring our enjoyment of this otherwise most delightful spot.

Manitou Lake, three miles from the village, swarms with little-mouth bass. One can hire a rig for a dollar and a half for the day, and many were the hours spent in close and delightful intercourse with the inhabitants of this beautiful body of water. Bass are freaky fish, and one never knows just when they will take a notion to scorn all efforts at their capture. One day Sue and the writer drove over to the lake, and those bass took everything that was offered. In a little sandy bay, where the water was not over four feet deep, we anchored and began fishing with minnows. So eager were the fish that both of us were kept busy hauling in the victims and putting on fresh bait. The Senior decided to try a gaudy, artificial fly, and the bass grabbed it with utter disregard of the fact that it resembled nothing which they had ever seen before. The fishing went forward so fast and furiously that it was finally agreed to throw back every bass that was not clearly of three pounds in weight, or more. Urged on by the sport of that day, the whole family started bright and early the next morning to duplicate the delightful experience. Alas! some mysterious change had come over the “spirit of their dream” in fishdom. Not a bass could be found in the little sandy bay where they had thronged only a short twenty-four hours before and, after a day of arduous toil, the net results were five bass, not one over two pounds.

If the fisherman were to find an earthly paradise it would be where he could catch trout from one side of his boat and little-mouth bass from the other. Next in attractiveness to this unrealized ideal must be placed the spot where these two species of game fish may both be found within a radius of a few miles. In this respect Manitowaning fills the bill. Although the village is on an island—Grand Manitoulin—trout streams abound, and among these the one flowing out of Manitou Lake was highly recommended by local sportsmen. The favourite point was some fifteen miles distant, and we were advised to drive over in the afternoon, stay all night at a farmer’s nearby, getting the evening and morning fishing. That sounded attractive, and was promptly tried out. There may be lazier horses than the one we drove that day, but if so they should be promptly executed for the crime of putting an unendurable strain on the driver’s good nature. But we finally arrived at our destination, and could hardly wait to stable Bucephalus, so eager were we to begin operations with the trout. It was a sizable stream, with much quick water in sight as we crossed the bridge and, in anticipation, we saw the big string of noble fish that we would carry proudly back to Manitowaning on the morrow. Must it be told? When it was nine o’clock that night and too dark to distinguish a favourable pool from a mud-puddle, we turned towards the farm-house not only without a trout, but not having had one rise in response to the incalculable number of times that the alluring flies had been cast. The next morning, at sunrise, we were on the stream again, and four hours of faithful fishing brought in return two small trout which had evidently escaped from some asylum for feeble-minded fish.

On our way out we had noticed an attractive looking stream which we crossed some ten miles from Manitowaning. Just by the bridge over this stream stood the remains of an old mill, half fallen down and with the timbers of the dam furnishing ideal hiding places for trout. When this spot was reached on the return trip the pull was too strong to be resisted and, hitching the apology for a horse to a nearby fence, preparations were made for a foray upon the unsuspecting fish. Fly-casting was out of the question and, after choosing a new snood of double gut and covering the hook with an exceedingly plethoric angleworm, the bait was cautiously dropped into the rushing waters at the upper side of the ruins of the flume. Slowly the line was paid out and the lure allowed to go far down out of sight. Zip! Yank! Tug!—and it’s all over. Under the conditions, any such thing as playing the fish was out of the question, and the straight-away pull parted that new snood as if it had been made of a single strand of cotton thread. Our humiliation was complete, and with a thoroughly chastened spirit the horse was untied and the homeward journey resumed. That night as we told the champion fisherman of the village of the experience at the old mill, he poured a little balm upon our sore spirit by exclaiming, “That’s no trout, that’s a whale. There isn’t a fisherman within twenty-five miles of the old mill who has not hooked that fish and lost him.” Strange, isn’t it, how other men’s ill fortune takes some measure of the sting from our own?

But this is no tale of woe. On another day, and on the same stream that flows by the old mill, the elect-lady and her unworthy consort spent hours that are a joy to recall. It was only eleven miles to the point recommended by our friendly adviser, and the horse was reasonably ambitious. We had laid in a supply of provisions and took along a skillet. A perfect day and perfect comradeship, plenty to eat and the novelty of unexplored territory, made it certain that, fish or no fish, the hours would pass pleasantly. As so frequently happens when we are not very particular whether the fish bite or not, they elected to be friendly. The stream where we visited it ran through meadow and pasture-land, with a luxuriant growth of alders along its banks. The open spaces afforded opportunities for my lady to try her hand at trout fishing, and the other member of the party could wade the stream and test the more inaccessible places. The water was almost ice-cold, the stream having its rise less than a mile away in a great, bubbling spring. Owing to the colour of the water the stream is called the “Bluejay.”

When noon came, a fire was kindled in a secluded spot close by the running brook. Coffee! You never tasted any like it. Fried trout! Why are they never so appetizing as when cooked and eaten in the open? We lingered long over that dinner, and the writer would fain linger a little over that day even now when it is only a memory. He has known many happy days; days which are golden as he looks back upon them across the years; but among them all no day spent in the out-of-doors, in touch with fields and stream and sky, stands out more clearly and alluringly against the background of yesterday than that passed with the dearest woman in the world upon the banks of the Bluejay. The sun was low in the west as we started homeward, and from the summit of a low hill over which the road led, we looked north and eastward over miles of woodland and cultivated fields, and saw in the distance the glistening waters of the bay. Yes, there is the lighthouse at Manito-waning, and the children are watching for us. In spite of the alluring beauty of the scene, something more attractive awaits us yonder. We must hasten.

Before leaving home it had been decided that all but one member of the family should spend a portion of the vacation time in visiting old friends.

Accordingly, when Sault Ste. Marie was reached, the devotee of rod and reel turned his face towards the north, while the wife and children took steamer for Chicago. The trip into the woods was not undertaken alone, for a fisherman friend who shall be known as Jim, one of the best of comrades, was waiting at the Canadian “Soo” to bear us company on the visit to the Algoma woods. What name, if any, the railroad bears which runs from the “Soo” sixty miles northeast, we do not know. The company does not depend upon passenger traffic for revenue, for that would mean bankruptcy. The road is used for hauling out logs, with the suggestion now and then made that some day it will be extended to Hudson’s Bay. The day before we were to go up the line, a trestle had been partially burned, and the train crept fearfully over the half-repaired structure. We were probably some five or six hours running the sixty miles which brought us to Trout Lake and the shack where we were to stop.