It was well into the afternoon before the canoes reached the end of the
carry--poking out through the green--one on the shoulders of each guide,
inverted like long shields, such as an ancient race might have used as a
protection from arrows. Eddie and I, meantime, had been employed getting
a mess of frogs, for it was swampy just there, and frogs, mosquitoes and
midges possessed the locality. We anointed for the mosquitoes and
"no-see-ums," as the midges are called by the Indians, and used our
little rifles on the frogs.
I wonder, by the way, what mosquitoes were made for. Other people have
wondered that before, but you can't overdo the thing. Maybe if we keep
on wondering we shall find out. Knowledge begins that way, and it will
take a lot of speculation to solve the mosquito mystery.
I can't think of anything that I could do without easier than the
mosquito. He seems to me a creature wholly devoid of virtues. He is a
glutton, a poisoner, a spreader of disease, a dispenser of disturbing
music. That last is the hardest to forgive. If he would only be still I
could overlook the other things. I wonder if he will take his voice with
him into the next world. I should like to know, too, which place he is
bound for. I should like to know, so I could take the other road.[2]
Across Mountain Lake was not far, and then followed another short
carry--another link of removal--to a larger lake, Pescawess. It was
nearly five miles across Pescawess, but we made good time, for there was
a fair wind. Also we had the knowledge that Pescawah Brook flows in on
the other side, and the trout there were said to be large and not often
disturbed.
We camped a little below this brook, and while the tents were going up
Eddie and I took one of the canoes and slipped away past an island or
two, among the strewn bowlders at the stream's mouth, pausing to cast a
little here and there, though at first with no other result than to get
our lines in a mess together.
"Now, say, old man," Eddie began, as my line made a turn around his neck
and a half-dozen twists around his tackle, the whole dropping in a heap
in the water, "you mustn't cast like that. You should use the treetop
cast--straight up in the air, when there's a man behind you. Don't you
know you might lacerate a fellow's ear, or put a hook through his lip,
or his nose, or something?"
I said that I was sorry, and that if he would give me a few points on
the treetop cast, and then avoid sitting in the treetops as much as
possible himself I thought there would be no further danger.
He was not altogether pacified. The lines were in a bad tangle and he
said it was wasting precious time to be fooling that way. Clearly two
men could not fish from one canoe and preserve their friendship, and
after our lines were duly parted and Eddie had scolded me sufficiently,
we went ashore just below where the swift current tumbles in, and made
our way to the wide, deep, rock-bound pools above. The going was pretty
thick and scratchy, and one had to move deliberately.
Eddie had more things to carry than I did, for he had brought his gun
and his long-handled net, and these, with his rod, set up and properly
geared with a long leader and two flies, worried him a good deal. The
net had a way of getting hung on twigs. The line and leader displayed a
genius for twisting around small but tough branches and vines, the hooks
caught in unexpected places, and the gun was possessed to get between
his legs. When I had time to consider him, he was swearing steadily and
I think still blaming me for most of his troubles, though the saints
know I was innocent enough and not without difficulties of my own.
Chiefly, I was trying to avoid poison ivy, which is my bane and seemed
plentiful in this particular neck of the woods.
We were out at last, and the wide, dark pool, enclosed by great black
bowlders and sloping slabs of stone, seemed as if it might repay our
efforts. Not for years, maybe, had an artificial fly been cast in that
water. Perhaps Eddie was still annoyed with me, for he pushed farther up
to other pools, and was presently lost to view.
I was not sorry of this, for it may be remembered that I had thus far
never caught a trout by casting in open, smooth water, and I was willing
to practice a little alone. I decided to work deliberately, without
haste and excitement, and to get my flies caught in the treetops as
infrequently as possible. I adjusted them now, took a good look behind
and tossed my cast toward the other side of the dark pool. I thought I
did it rather well, too, and I dragged the flies with a twitching
motion, as I had seen Eddie do it, but nothing happened. If there were
trout anywhere in the world, they would be in a pool like this, and if
there was ever an evening for them it was now. It was in the nature of
probability that Eddie would come back with a good string, and I could
not let him find me a confessed failure. So once more I sent the flies
out over the pool--a little farther this time, and twitched them a
little more carefully, but I might have been fishing in a tub, so far as
any tangible fish were concerned.
A little more line and a reckless back cast landed my tail fly in a
limb--a combination which required time and patience to disengage. By
the time I had worked out the puzzle it began to seem like a warm
evening. Then I snapped the flies into several different corners of the
pool, got hung again on the same limb, jerked and broke the fly and
repeated some of the words I had learned from Eddie as we came through
the brush.
I was cooler after that, and decided to put on a new and different fly.
I thought a Jenny Lind would be about the thing, and pretty soon was
slapping it about--at first hopefully, then rashly. Then in mere
desperation I changed the top fly and put on a Montreal. Of course I
wouldn't catch anything. I never would catch anything, except by
trolling, as any other duffer, or even a baby might, but I would have
fun with the flies, anyway. So the Montreal went capering out over the
pool, landing somewhere amid the rocks on the other side. And then all
at once I had my hands full of business, for there was a leap and a
splash, and a z-z-z-t of the reel, and a second later my rod was curved
like a buggy whip, the line as taut as wire and weaving and swaying from
side to side with a live, heavy body, the body of a trout--a real
trout--hooked by me with a fly, cast on a quiet pool.
I wouldn't have lost that fish for money. But I was deadly afraid of
doing so. A good thing for me, then, my practice in landing, of the
evening before. "Easy, now--easy," I said to myself, just as Del had
done. "If you lose this fish you're a duffer, sure enough; also a chump
and several other undesirable things. Don't hurry him--don't give him
unnecessary line in this close place where there may be snags--don't,
above all things, let him get any slack on you. Just a little line,
now--a few inches will do--and keep the tip of your rod up. If you point
it at him and he gets a straight pull he will jump off, sure, or he will
rush and you cannot gather the slack. Work him toward you, now, toward
your feet, close in--your net has a short handle, and is suspended
around your neck by a rubber cord. The cord will stretch, of course, but
you can never reach him over there. Don't mind the reel--you have taken
up enough line. You can't lift out a fish like that on a four-ounce
rod--on any rod short of a hickory sapling. Work him toward you, you
gump! Bring your rod up straighter--straighter--straight! Now for the
net--carefully--oh, you clumsy duffer, to miss him! Don't you know that
you can't thrash him into the net like that?--that you must dip the net
_under_ him? I suppose you thought you were catching mice. You deserve
to lose him altogether. Once more, now, he's right at your feet--a
king!"
Two long backward steps after that dip, for I must be certain that he
was away from the water's edge. Then I bumped into something--something
soft that laughed. It was Eddie, and he had two fish in his landing
net.
"Bully!" he said. "You did it first-rate, only you don't need to try to
beat him to death with the landing net. Better than mine," he added, as
I took my trout off the fly. "Suppose now we go below. I've taken a look
and there's a great pool, right where the brook comes out. We can get to
it in the canoe. I'll handle the canoe while you fish."
That, also, is Eddie's way. He had scolded me and he would make amends.
He had already taken down his rod, and we made our way back through the
brush without much difficulty, though I was still hot with effort and
excitement, and I fear a little careless about the poison ivy. A few
minutes later, Eddie, who handles a canoe--as he does everything else
pertaining to the woods--with grace and skill, had worked our craft
among the rocks into the wide, swift water that came out from under a
huge fallen log--the mouth of Pescawah Brook.
"Cast there," he said, pointing to a spot just below the log.
Within twenty minutes from that time I had learned more about
fishing--real trout fishing--than I had known before in all my life. I
had, in Eddie, a peerless instructor, and I had such water for a drill
ground as is not found in every day's, or every week's, or every month's
travel. Besides, there were fish. Singly and in pairs they came--great,
beautiful, mottled fellows--sometimes leaping clear of the water like a
porpoise, to catch the fly before it fell. There were none less than a
pound, and many over that weight. When we had enough for supper and
breakfast--a dozen, maybe--we put back the others that came, as soon as
taken from the hook. The fishing soon ended then, for I believe the
trout have some means of communication, and one or two trout returned to
a pool will temporarily discourage the others. It did not matter. I had
had enough, and once more, thanks to Eddie, returned to the camp,
jubilant.