We got off about two, Walter and I paddling, and Spiff in the middle, in the hat. We left all the guides to shut up camp and bring on the “butin.” We paddled two miles down the lake, and then into the river among the rocks—it was low water and you had to know the channel. We shot a little rapids, and the flower of civilization was scared blue, but we made the portage, and there I flopped the canoe on my head and walked off, and Walter guided the steps of the stranger. It’s only a mile down the portage to the Pool, so we got there an hour after leaving camp, and Walter at once paid no more attention to anybody. He began to put up his Leonard rod as if it were a religious ceremony; he does it that way. He had his leader ready, and I saw him meditate on the flies, and then open his fly-box and look it over thoughtfully to see if there was anything more seductive to the troutly mind. I remember that cast; it was a Jock Scott for hand-fly, a Silver Doctor in the middle, and a Montreal tail-fly. That’s the way he started. Afterward he changed the Silver Doctor for a brown hackle—it was a brightish day. The minute he began to string the rod, it came to me that we’d forgotten the landing-net. That was ghastly when we were out for big fish, but it was much too far to go back, and I knew the guides would have it, and so I hoped the giant wouldn’t get on, and Walter wouldn’t notice about the net till the guides got there. And I kept mum, not to fuss the fisherman.
The Golden Pool was named that because it is. In September, when we fish there most, the leaves around it have turned yellow, and yellow only, for we’re too far north for red foliage, and it’s all in a bath of gold light. It’s a widening in the river about a hundred yards across, and a lot of it is shallow, so, of a bright afternoon, the tawny-colored sand-bars show through. And all around the shore are tall birches which lean over, and their thin leaves are gold-shot, and the sun glitters through them. There are alders close to the water, and these are frost-touched too, and the stream rushes in over a steep rapids at a gorge between alder walls. It tumbles flashing around rocks in tier on tier of champagne whiteness, with sherry-colored slides of smooth water, and in the deep holes it’s the gold-brown of brandy. Flecks of foam whirl over the surface, and under the bushes at the edge lie feathery hunks of it like piles of whipped cream a foot square. As you get to the place from the shadow and quiet of the woods, you seem to have come into a shower of glancing light and movement and excitement. You breathe in autumn and energy sharply. Yet it’s all as still and remote as the big shadows on the mountains. That’s the Golden Pool, and that’s where we got, the afternoon of September 15, when my brother squatted on the rocks, and put up and strung his rod.
The reel sang as the first line ran, and the snells fell stiff and curly—but not over the hole—trust Walter not to stir up that hole till he was ready for business. In two or three casts the snells were wet, and the flies spun out on the brown, foam-spotted water. And then Walter cast carefully at the edge of the real fishing-ground. Along the left-hand side of the Pool the bottom is all big rocks, and in between are deep, cold holes, and there the big trout lie—never many, yet every year two or three good ones are taken by the few who know the secret, from a place about twenty feet square. It’s ticklish fishing, for there are sharp edges to the rocks for an educated fish to dodge under, and more than once a leader has been cut in two by a jerk from a fish that knew his business; and many’s the fly yanked off around those edges. So it’s skill against skill, man with his clumsy inventions against trout with his exquisite instinct—human brains out of their element against trout cleverness in its stronghold. That’s the way it is when you go fishing in the Golden Pool.
Walter cast his prettiest from the first, and that’s very pretty casting indeed. The dim-colored Jock Scott danced delicately toward us as he lifted the tip of the rod, hardly touching the surface; the Silver Doctor just wet its bluish, silverish wings, and the Montreal, with its streak of purple-red, dragged a bit in the water; big trout are more likely to take a fly underneath than to jump for it. It was all done in regulation form, slow recover, wrist motion only, sidewise jiggle as the flies came in, a lengthening line covering the hole slowly from side to side. Close back of us was the forest, with just a few yards of big rocks and low bushes for clear space; the recover, you’ll see, was a critical business. It was mighty easy to catch a fly in one of those alders or on a fringe of tree, but Walter didn’t catch once. He’s a shark at the job. However, it was too early; the sun was too strong; nothing doing. So, after half an hour of exhibition casting:
“Take me across, Bob,” said Walter, his eyes still fast on the Pool.
So I slid the canoe in, away off one side, awfully cautiously so no ripple would disturb the sacred and holy twenty feet square. And Walter stepped in the bow, and I slid the paddle into the water without a splash, and in two or three careful strokes I had him over at the farther side of the pond, well away, but yet within casting distance of the hole. “Zip” went the reel, with the businesslike, sharp, soft sound which means it’s well oiled and well wound and well managed. It’s a joy to hear Walter’s reel. Out flew the nine-foot line of light which was the leader, and over the brown water danced three spots of color which were the flies. And then I saw Walter’s fist jerk back about two inches, hard, and my eyes jumped to the leader, and the hand-fly was taut, and there was a bunch of white foam where it should have been, and a great bubbling of water, and the Silver Doctor and the Montreal were floating loose, and the kicking and bubbling and struggling were stronger each second. A fish was on the Jock Scott, and Walter had hooked him. I watched about thirty seconds with my heart in my mouth, and then I knew it wasn’t what we were after. And with that Walter gave his pretty grunt.
“Huh!” he said, and began to reel in, casual-like.
“Smoll feesh?” I asked, as Blanc talks English.
“Yes, the little cuss,” Walter murmured, and yanked up alongside the boat a three-quarter-pound trout.
“Want to keep him?”