“The grayling generally springs entirely out of the water when first struck by the hook, and tugs strongly at the line, requiring as much dexterity to land it safely as it would to secure a trout of six times the size.”—Dr. Richardson.
“Grayling will often take the fly under water, rising so quietly that you will scarcely see any rise or break of the water at all. It is desirable, therefore, to watch the line narrowly, and to strike whenever you think it stops or checks, and you will now and then be surprised, although there is no break in the water, to find a good grayling on the hook. For, as is often the case with trout, the big ones are very quiet risers.”—Francis Francis.
“To be a perfect fisherman you require more excellencies than are usually to be found in such a small space as is allotted to a man’s carcass.”—Parker Gilmore.
“The trout has, so to speak, a Herculean cast of beauty; the grayling rather that of an Apollo—light, delicate, and gracefully symmetrical.”—H. Cholmondely-Pennell.
THE GRAYLING.
By Fred Mather.
The very name of my beloved fish calls up a host of recollections that form themselves into a picture that, above all others, is the most cheerful one adorning memory’s wall. We old fellows live largely in the past, and can afford to let younger men revel in the future; and in my own case, I can say that, having filled Shakespeare’s apothegm of “one man in his time plays many parts,” there are often retrospects of life as a boyish angler, an older hunter, trapper, and general vagabond on the frontiers; a soldier; and a later return to a first love. Of these glances over the shoulder of time, a few trips to Northern Michigan and its grayling streams mark the journey of life with a white stone.
When Prof. Cope announced, in 1865, that he had received specimens from Michigan, the English anglers in America were incredulous, and there was some spicy correspondence, in the sportsmen’s papers of those days, concerning the identity of the fishes. As usual, the scientist discomfited the angler, and proved his position. The fish had long been known to the raftsmen and natives of Michigan by local names, but had never been identified as the historic grayling. Some eight years after the discovery of Prof. Cope that we had the grayling in American waters; Mr. D. H. Pitzhugh, Jr., sent some of them to Mr. Charles Hallock, then editor of Forest and Stream, and they were shown in New York to the doubters, who even then were not convinced.