Forest Neighbors: Life Stories of Wild Animals

by William Davenport Hulbert

But presently three more flies came down together, and lit in a row, one behind another. They were different from the first, and he decided to try again. He chose the foremost of the three, and found it quite as ill-tasting as the other had been; but this time he didn't spit it out, for the stinger was a little too quick for him, and before he could let go it was fast in his lip. For the next few minutes he tore around the pool as if he was crazy, frightening some of the smaller fishes almost out of their wits, and sending them rushing up-stream in a panic. He himself had more than once been badly scared by seeing other trout do just what he was doing, but he had never realized what it all meant. Now he understood.

The first thing he did was to go shooting along the surface for several feet, throwing his head from side to side as he went, and doing his best to shake that horrible fly out of his mouth. But it wouldn't shake, so he tried jumping out of the water and striking at the line with his tail. That wasn't any better, and next he rushed off up the stream as hard as he could go. But the line kept pulling him round to the left with gentle but irresistible force, and before he knew it he was back in the pool again. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, it was always pulling, pulling, pulling—not hard enough to tear the hook away, but just enough to keep him from getting an inch of slack. If there had been any chance to jerk he would probably have got loose in short order. He rushed around the pool so hard that he soon grew weary, and presently he sank to the bottom, hoping to lie still for a few minutes, and rest, and perhaps think of some new way of escape. But even there that steady tugging never ceased. It seemed as if it would pull his jaw out of his head if he didn't yield, and before long he let himself be drawn up again to the surface. Once he was so close to the shore that the angler made a thrust at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side. It frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away again so fast that the reel sang, and the line swished through the water like a knife.

"He tried jumping out of the water."

The other two flies were trailing behind, and the short line that held them was constantly catching on his fins and twisting itself around his tail in a way that annoyed him greatly. He almost thought he could get away if they were not there to hinder him. And yet, as it finally turned out, it was one of those flies that saved his life. He was coming slowly back from that last unsuccessful rush for liberty, fighting for every inch, and only yielding to a strength a thousand times greater than his own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank, until the hook came away and he was free.

It was a painful experience, and he carried the scar as long as he lived, but the lesson he learned was worth all it cost. I won't say that he never touched bait again, but he was much more cautious, and no other artificial fly ever stung him as badly as that one.

The years went by, and the Trout increased in size and strength and wisdom, as a trout should. One after another his rivals went away to the happy hunting-grounds, most of them losing their lives because they could not resist the temptation to taste a made-up fly, or to swallow a luscious angle-worm festooned on a dainty little steel hook; and the number of fish who dared dispute his right to do whatever he pleased grew beautifully less. And at last there was only one trout left in all the stream who was larger and stronger than he. That was the same big fellow who had come so near swallowing him on the occasion of his first visit to the nesting-grounds; and the way the fierce, solemn old brute finally departed this life deserves a paragraph all to itself.

It happened one morning in early spring, just after the ice had gone out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and lazy after the long, dull winter, though he had an eye open, as always, for anything particularly good to eat. I doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not believe in eating them out of season; but almost anything else was welcome. He was faring very well that morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running high, and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been swept into it by the melting snow. And presently, what should come drifting down with the current but a poor little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain effort to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had swallowed a mouse whole, just as you would take an oyster from the half-shell, and he knew that they were very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky little animal, and in another second he would have had him; but just then the big bully came swaggering up with an air which seemed to say: "That's my meat. You get out of this!"

Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized the mouse, and then—his time had come. He fought bravely, but he was fairly hooked, and in a few minutes he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath, flopping wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand and dirt. If he had understood English he might have overheard an argument which immediately took place between the angler and a girl, and which began something like this:

"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice aren't good bait? This is the biggest trout that's been caught in this stream for years."