Talking It Over
"I determined to follow the stream up into the mountains, but as I neared the woods at the upper end of the meadow I stopped to cast into a long, straight reach of the river where the breeze from the ocean was rippling the surface of the stream. The grassy bank rose steep behind me and only a little fringe of wild roses partly concealed me from the water. I cast the Pitcher flies you gave me well out on the rough water, allowed them to sink a hand-breadth, and at the first movement of the line I saw that heart-expanding flash of a broad silver side gleaming from the clear depths. The trout fastened on savagely, and as he was coming my way, I assisted his momentum with all the spring of the rod, and he came flying out into the clean, fresh grass of the meadow behind me. It was a half-pound speckled brook trout. I did not stop to pouch him, but cast again. In a moment I was fast to another such, and again I sprung him bodily out, glistening like a silver ingot, to where his brother lay. In my first twelve casts I took ten such fish, all from ten to twelve inches long, mostly without any playing. I took twenty-two fine fish without missing one strike, and landed every one safely. I was not an hour in taking the lot. Then oddly enough, I whipped the water for fifty yards without another rise. Satisfied that the circus was over, I climbed up into the meadow and gathered the spoils into my basket. Nearly all were brook trout, but two or three silvery salmon trout among them had struck quite as gamely. I had such a weight of fish as I never took before on the Nekanicum in our most fortunate fishing."
Beaver Dam and Reservoir
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"Walking back along the trail, I came again to the long reach where I had my luck an hour before, and cast again to see if there might be another fish. Two silver glints shone up through the waves in the same instant. I struck one of the two fish, though I might have had both if I had left the flies unmoved the fraction of a second. Three times I refused such doublets, for I had not changed an inch of tackle, and scarcely even looked the casting line over. It was no time to allow two good fish to go raking that populous pool. However I did take chances with one doublet. So out of the same lucky spot on my return, I took ten more fish each about a foot long. I brought nearly every one flying out as I struck him, and I never put such a merciless strain on a rod before.
"That Populous Pool"
Photo by John Gill