dreamy shade; how glistening the appearance of the water-courses, like a
big silvery thread winding in and out along the vale! the evening air
is full of music; the bee is humming around you; what a flood of music
comes from the throat of that woodland thrush in yonder thorn hedge! the
strain is taken up, and the very woods echo again with the song of the
black-bird. As he ceases his roundelay, the soft clear note of another
bird strikes on the ear; for the moment’ nature seems hushed; almost
breathless you wait; the notes come rich and clear, as silvery as a
lute, a flood of melody; the sound dies away and instantly the woods
ring again; all the sweet-throated songsters seem as if applauding the
song of the nightingale; we sit and drink in these sounds, until one by
one the songs drop into silence, leaving the nightingale to pour out its
tuneful music until far into the night. At this moment there comes in
the air the quivering boom of a bell ringing out the hour of nine from
the steeple of the church yonder, faintly limned on the evening shadows.
Ah! listen again! there comes the evening chime. How the quivering notes
pulsate up here on these-hilltops! how silvery the tones; as the chords
of the vesper hymn rings out sweet and clear, our hearts beat in
rhythm to the strain! Lovely vale! Israel’s grandest seer, who with eye
undimmed and natural force unabated, even from Pisgah’s lofty heights
gazed on no lovelier scene than this we have surveyed. We descend into
the shadows; promising to meet my angling friend some time during the
following day, I wend my way homeward and to rest.
The evening shadows were again falling ere I could join our angler, but
the flies were on the waters and roach were fairly jumping, the surface
of the stream was alive with fish, both roach and dace breaking water
around us. My friend was no novice; I found him whipping the stream from
bank to bank, and his creel testified to his success. He was using a
tail fly and dropper, a red hackle for the former, and an imitation of
the common blue house-fly for the dropper. These fish are fastidious in
their tastes; they do not rise at flies like a trout, but come to the
surface of the water and just break for the fly and at once turn tail
up. He who fishes for them must have a quick eye and steady hand; then
he can kill readily enough. They are a toothsome fish, but a trifle
bony. Eye and hand must work together, and when fish are feeding they
will readily take the fly. They are tender in the mouth and require care
in handling. They afford good sport in streams where they are abundant,
and are often killed weighing from one and a-half to two pounds.
My angling friend had come well prepared with letters introducing him to
the owners of the fine trout streams, and readily obtained permission to
fish these preserved waters. It was rare sport to watch him daintily lay
out his line across the stream, his stretcher a June fly, or at times a
floating May-fly skittered across the surface until close to the farther
hank. Here lay a big _Salmo fario_. We had been watching him lazily
coming to the surface to suck in a fly or bug that had tumbled from the
trees overhead. A big cockchafer came spinning and buzzing down stream.
All laziness gone in an instant, up came the _Salmo_ showing his huge
sides. A fierce lunge and a heavy splash and the chafer was gone into
the cavern of the open mouth. The fly-book was out in an instant. A
dark brown fly somewhat resembling the ‘chafer replaced the stretcher.
A careful cast a little up stream, a lunge and a miss from the trout.
Another cast close in to the bank, a slight jerk and the fly assumed the
appearance of the buzzing chafer; the same sharp dash, the hand was
as quick as the trout this time, the hook was driven home and the fun
began. Such a dashing, splurging, rushing I had never seen. He was
determined to use every art known to trout-lore before he surrendered.
The rod bent and sprung, the line fairly swished as he tore up stream;
above him lay the limb of a tree, scraggy and ragged; toward this he
plunged, but the line tightened on him; he tugged and jerked, but gained
not an inch; he came to the surface and thrashed the water with his
broad tail. Fatal error! as he did so the line came in as fast as
fingers could fly round, the landing net was slipped under him, a quick
upward movement and Master _Salmo_ was flung high and dry. He was too
big for the net and so was ignominiously flung ashore.
What a noble trout! His silver sides and belly gleamed in the light,
his blood-red spots seemed to glow with indignation at his cruel
death. He had long been a lordling over the other trout and now was
strangling! Kill him! I cannot bear to see a trout gasping. Killed and
scaled he weighs three and a half pounds. A credit to the angler: but
at times, during the contest, it was a question to which the honor
belonged; it was: “Splendid rod!” “Ah! how skilfully he handles his
fish.” “Who would have dreamt that little thing would have stood such a
strain?”
Gentle angler, let us leave our friend to the contemplation of the
beauties of the fairest of all England’s garden landscapes, and the
preserved trout streams, and plunge with me into an American forest.
By a beautiful lake in the famous State of Michigan a little settlement
is springing up. Over in that bay is a trout creek emptying; it is full
of trout—trout _galore_—trout by the hundreds can be seen. Come with
me, I will show them to you. Let me drop a fly into this hole. Ah! there
he is! see him dash for it. He won’t come again, let us push along.
Push along, you say? do you expect I am coming through that brush? Not
much; I am not a crank. If you are so fond of trying to break your neck
for a string of trout, why go. I go! am quite willing to be alone on
this lovely little creek, for it contains some of the handsomest trout
it has ever been my good luck to kill. Here and there I drop in a
fly; sometimes a “Yellow May,” sometimes a “Professor,” sometimes a
“Stone-fly”; once in a while an “Ibis” is fancied by some fastidious
trout. How and then a “Floating May-fly” seems a favorite. Where the
brush overhangs and is a darksome, lonely spot, I drop in a “Royal
Coachman,” and out comes a big trout lusty and fighting; sometimes fancy
flies are spurned and hackles of all colors kill; then a fly composed of
alternate feathers, red and white, of no name, but a favorite with the
writer, will kill when trout will not take any other fly.
I am enjoying the fun, and the creel is getting heavy. Half a mile of
fishing and twenty-five handsome trout is doing good enough for mid-day
fishing.
As the evening falls I take my split bamboo and the fly-book, pull on
the wading hoots, and go down to the mouth of the creek, wading out
until I am as far as the sand runs. I cast out more for practice than to
expect trout. I have on a big bass-fly large enough for a salmon-fly. As
it strikes the water twenty-five feet from me there is a commotion. “Ye
gods and little fishes!” What was the fuss? I cast again, and as true as
I am here if a number of trout did not jump clear out for that fly,
big as it was! Hastily reeling in I put on a dun-colored fly, and cast
again; the same jump and dash, but no trout. Changing my flies until at
last I put on as a stretcher a “White Miller,” I flung out clear beyond
any former cast into the midst of what appeared like a boiling spring.
The fly dropped softly and out came a host of trout. School kept just
then, for I certainly had struck a school of trout. Striking, I fastened
into a fine fish; reeling in, I dried my fly and cast again and hooked
again. The fun grew fast and furious; my little bamboo swished and bent;
hooks were snipped off; I was excited and jubilant, when along came
an itinerant parson. The twenty-five or thirty trout I had, set him
longing; he must fish. Jerking off his boots, pulling up his pants, he
waded into the icy cold water equipped with a stick cut from the forest.
He had nosed out a line and some hooks from a supply I had left on the
bank in my fishing-case, and without so much as “by your leave” began
threshing the water as close to the school as he could get his line;
this was baited with a piece of dead fish. To say that I was disgusted
faintly expresses my feeling. I would have ceased fishing, but my friend
with whom I was staying said, “Ho, don’t stop while sport is so good.”
I put on a “Royal Coachman” and cast out again, hooking and bringing
out trout every second or third cast. I began casting wide, the school
followed my flies. I tried the “Professor’s,” “Dun’s,” “Hackle’s,” “Seth
Green,” “Governor,” and “May-flies,” with good success. With one pure
“Yellow May” I caught a dozen handsome trout, but in this event the
evening shadows were fast falling. As they deepened, the “Royal
Coachman” and “White Millers” were the killing flies. I cast until I
could not see where my flies fell, and even then once in a while hooked
and brought in a trout.
I had been thoughtless enough to leave my creel up in the house, never
expecting to have this run of good luck. All my trout were taken from
the hook and thrown twenty-five feet to shore. I lost many of them in
this way. Thirty my friends claimed, yet when I came to count tails, I
found forty as handsome trout as ever man wished to see, and all caught
from 6 in the evening until dark, about 7.45. I had no net, no creel,
therefore had to lead my trout into my hand. The friend at whose house I
was staying claims I lost more than I caught by having them flounder off
the hook while trying to take them by the gills, and by flinging them
ashore.
I have used flies on this creek many times, but never had such luck
before nor since. My experience has been that the fine fancy flies of
the eastern streams are useless on these Michigan streams; the nearer
the flies approach to a species of small moth found flitting amidst the
foliage of the forest, the greater the success. A word, brother angler,
and I have done. Learn to cast a fly, and you will never go back to
bait fishing from choice. Get good flies, and you won’t regret the
extra money they cost you; don’t buy cheap imitations or trade made
flies—“they are frauds.”
Don’t buy a pole big enough for the staff of a Philistine Goliath;
to fish for trout, buy a fine rod, take care of it, learn to use it
thoroughly. Never buy a cheap rod; a rod fit for trouting must be as
fine as it is possible to make them, and it should not make a shadow on
the water. Cheap rods are like cheap guns, scham-dahms! Good trout
rods cost a good deal of time and labor; cheap rods are turned out in
a rapid-running lathe. They are a delusion. Get the best materials of
everything you need, and buy of a good maker. Never be tempted to buy
“cheap flies because they are bargains”—cheap rods because some one is
selling out; “want to get out of the business, no money in it.” Remember
you are the party who will be sold. Cheap things for trouting are a
“fraud, a delusion, and a snare.”
Almost every angler has been bitten, but the prevailing opinion is: buy
the best tackle your pocket-book can afford and take care of it. And my
word for it, as an angler who learned to cast a line for pickerel at ten
years old, you will love the sport and think it the best way to spend a
summer’s vacation of any amusement under the sun.
“In using the fly the object is to imitate the movements of the natural
insect as nearly as possible. To drop the line naturally on the water,
and then to keep the fly endued with life, is the stratagem. From the
moment the fly touches the water the angler should keep his eye on it.
Trout often feed a little under the surface; they do not always break
when they rise, but quietly suck in the fly.”—_Charles Hallock_.
“‘An angler, sir, uses the finest tackle, and catches his fish
scientifically—trout, for instance—with the artificial fly, and he is
mostly a quiet, well-behaved gentleman. A fisherman, sir, uses any kind
of ‘ooks and lines, and catches them any way; so he gets them it’s all
one to ’im, and he is generally a noisy fellah, sir, something like a
gunner.’”—_Doctor Bethune._
[Illustration: 0148]
16. Silver Black.
17. Scarlet Ibis.
18. Stone Fly.
19. White Miller.
20. Fiery Brown.
21. Yellow Drake.
22. Grir. King.
23. Imbrie.
24. Soldier Palmer.
25. Cha
26. Portland.
27. Ethel May.
28. Pale Evening Dun.
29. Great Dun.
30. Whimbrel.
“Be stil moving your fly upon the water, or casting it into the
water; you yourself, being also alwaies moving down the stream.—_Izaak
Walton._
“When once alarmed, trout will never bite.”—_Seth Green_.
“Fly-fishers are usually brain-workers in society. Along the banks of
purling streams, beneath the shadows of umbrageous trees, or in the
secluded nooks of charming lakes, they have ever been found, drinking
deep of the invigorating forces of nature—giving rest and tone to
over-taxed brains and wearied nerves—while gracefully wielding the
supple rod, the invisible leader, and the fairy-like fly.”—_James A.
Henshall, M.D._
“It is generally true that if a trout is pricked by a fly-hook he will
not rise to it again.”—_W. C. Prime_.
“Christopher North.—Would you believe it, my dear Shepherd, that my
piscatory passions are almost dead within me; and I like now to saunter
along the banks and braes, eyeing the younkers angling, or to lay me
down on some sunny spot, and with my face up to heaven, watch the slow
changing clouds!”
“Shepherd.—I’ll no believe that, sir, till I see’t—and scarcely
then—for a bluidier-minded fisher nor Christopher North never threw a
hackle. Your creel fu’—your shootin’-bag fu’—your jacket-pouches fu’,
the pouches o’ your verra breeks fu’—half-a-dozen wee anes in your
waistcoat, no’ to forget them in the croon o’ your hat,—and, last o’
a’, when there’s nae place to stow awa ony mair o’ them, a willow-wand
drawn through the gills of some great big anes, like them ither
folk would grup wi’ the worm or the mennon—buta’ gruppit wi’ the
flee—Phin’s delight, as you ca’t,—a killen inseck—and on gut that’s
no easily broken—witness yon four pounder aneath Elibank wood, where
your line, sir, got entangled wi’ the auld oak-root, and yet at last ye
landed him on the bank, wi’ a’ his crosses and his stars glitterin’ like
gold and silver amang the gravel! I confess, sir, you’re the King o’
Anglers. But dinna tell me that you have lost your passion for the art;
for we never lose our passion for ony pastime at which we continue to
excel.”
THE LURE.
By “Bourgeois.”
Among the delightful summer resorts of Colorado Estes Park may be justly
considered one of the most attractive. It is now easy of access. Seven
years ago it began to be frequented, the trail having given way to the
wagon road. Before the days of easy ingress, I had cast my lures upon
the waters of the Thompson and Fall River, with gratifying success.
In the summer of 1875, the Governor, the Governor’s mother, and myself,
determined upon Estes Park for a six weeks’ vacation. With this end in
view, in the latter part of July, I sent off the team loaded with the
camp outfit.
Two days after we took the morning train for Longmont, on the Colorado
Central, and had an early lunch at the tail end of the wagon just
outside the town. Before noon we were on the fifteen-mile drive into the
canon of the St. Vrain, for camp.
By sunrise the following morning we had started, with twenty miles to
make over a new road part of the way, and no road at all in places,
and the places were many. However, we had to hitch on to the end of
the tongue but once, to snake the wagon over an otherwise impassable
boulder. The rock stood a foot out of ground, stretched entirely across
where the road was to be, and at an angle of 45°. The team could barely
get a foothold upon the top, when the traces were let out full, and the
double-tree hooked on the end of the tongue. The horses understood
their business, and upon a word settled their shoulders into the collars
together, the breeching gradually lifted as their knees bent a little;
without a slip their iron-shod hoofs held to the hard granite, and we
were up as deftly as a French dancing master would raise his hat to a
lady. In travelling in the hills there is nothing so gratifying as a
team whose pulling powers you can swear by; a balky horse is an engine
of destruction or death; if you know his failing, shoot him before you
reach the foothills.
As the sun dropped behind the range, lighting up the high peaks with
his golden rays, and the pines were beginning to take on tints of darker
green, we reached the head of the Park, and within three miles of our
camping ground. To the right of us “Olympus,” with the dying sunlight
dancing on his granite head, to the left Long’s Peak, with patches of
snow here and there, towering godlike above the surrounding giants.
Before us, Prospect Mountain with its rugged front far reaching above
its robes of green, while around its base and toward us came leaping the
beautiful mountain stream for two miles through the meadow-hued park,
with scarce a willow upon its banks. What a place to cast a fly! Aye,
indeed it is; and what a place it was to catch trout. But we must move
on around Prospect Mountain to Ferguson’s for camp, which we make on a
little eminence near a great spring and close by the cabin where we know
we shall be welcome.
A late supper disposed of, and the Governor stowed away in the blankets,
Ferguson and I fall talking at his broad fire-place about Horse Shoe
Park and Fall River; of course trout are plenty there; he had been up
the day before and knew whereof he spoke; yes, there were quite a number
of tourists in the park, but the streams were not “fished out.” He
rather thought that with “a pole” to every rod of the stream the fishing
improved; at least for him.
Our genial friend who obeyed Joshua in the long ago, was out of bed next
day sooner than I. Dick, the pony, gave me a cheerful good morning as
I put in an appearance and changed his picket pin. I received his
salutation as a good omen.
Breakfast over and Dick saddled, it was eight o’clock. We had five miles
to go. I strapped my rod and creel to the pommel, and with a caution to
the Governor’s mother not to let him fall into the spring, Ferguson
and I were off. There was no occasion to hurry; if we reached the
beaver-dams in Horse Shoe Park by ten o’clock we would be just in time.
Experience had taught me that the two hours before noon, and after five
o’clock were the hours for success.
Our route was a “cut off” without any trail, but familiar; across the
Thompson, up stream, westward for a mile, we turned up a “draw” to the
right, for a swale in the ridge dividing the Thompson and its tributary,
Fall River. By nine o’clock we had reached the summit of the divide.
Before and below us lay a beautiful park, three miles in length, by a
mile in width toward its upper end, where it rounded at the base of
the mountain range, giving it the shape of a horse shoe, which no doubt
suggested its name. To the north it is guarded by an immense mountain
of rocks, where towering and impenetrable cliffs stand out against
the background of blue sky, as though the Titans had some time builded
there, and mother earth had turned their castles into ruins, and
left them as monuments of her power. To the south a long, low-lying,
pine-covered hill, while from the range in the west with its snow
covered summit and base of soft verdure, comes a limpid stream winding
down through the grass-covered park, its course marked by the deeper
green of the wild grass and the willows. A mile away a band of mountain
sheep are feeding; they have evidently been down to water and are making
their way back to their haunts in the cliffs, and whence we know they
will quickly scud when they see or wind us. Ferguson longed for his
rifle; it was just his luck; he had the “old girl” with him the last
time, but “nary hoof” had he seen. To me they were precious hints of
man’s absence, and the wilderness.
Reaching the stream we picketed the ponies in the grass to their knees;
the nutritious mountain grass, the mother of cream so thick that you
have to dip it out of the jug with a spoon. The ponies were happy, and
I became nervous; it seemed half an hour before I could get my tackle
rigged. But after I had sent my favorite gray hackle on its mission and
had snatched a ten-inch trout from his native element, my nerves were
braced. A second and a third followed; I heard nothing from Ferguson
except the “swish” of his old cane pole above the music of the waters.
The trout struck and I landed them so fast that the sport began to be
monotonous, and I followed up the sound of the cane. Going round a clump
of willows I discovered the old gentleman upon the edge of the pool, and
that old rod going up and down with the regularity of a trip hammer, the
owner combining business and sport. I asked him what he was doing; he
said he was fishing, and I thought he was.
Wandering up stream, taking it leisurely, I had by noon filled my creel,
and was enjoying a sandwich under the shelter of some willows, when my
companion came along with his sixteen pound lard-can filled, besides a
dozen upon a stick. I asked him when he intended to quit. He said he had
never seen fish “bite” so; he hated to stop, and yet had all he could
carry, but concluded with me that enough was as good as a feast. Then
he began to banter me about my ash and lancewood, and the excess of his
catch over mine. I told him to wait till some other day. It came in the
course of time, upon the same stream. The trout refused everything I
had, grasshoppers included. Finally I fished up an old fly-book from
the depths of my coat pocket, and in it were half a dozen nameless
blue-bodied flies with a mouse-colored feather upon a number six Kirby.
Upon sight, I remembered to have discarded them in disgust, but I
thought I would try one for luck, and lo! the mystery was solved. I had
been working industriously for two hours and had two trout. Ferguson had
been no more successful, but was in sight when the trout began to rise
to my cast-off fly. He came down my way, wanted to know what I
was using, and I gave him one; he lost that and his leader in some
half-sunken brush, and I gave him another. But his good genius had
deserted him; I persuaded a trout right away from his lure, and he quit
in disgust, while I said never a word. Though a little sensitive upon
the score of success, he was and is a genial and companionable angler,
and one who can make a good cast withal, an he have proper tools.
Willow Park, an adjunct to Estes Park, through which runs a branch of
the Thompson, has afforded me many a day’s sport, and is nearer to camp.
Upon a memorable occasion I had been fishing down stream, when, with a
well-filled creel, I encountered a gigantic boulder on the hank. Just
beyond it was a pool that was suggestive; to reach the base of the
boulder it was necessary to get over a little bayou of about five feet
in width and three in depth. To jump it were easy but for the willows,
yet I must get to that pool. Selecting a place where I think the willows
will give way to my weight, I essay the leap. My feet reach the opposite
hank, my body presses back the brush, but I feel a rebound that assures
me of my fate. I clutch frantically at the swaying bush; it breaks in
my hand, and I sit down quite helplessly, muttering a prayer till the
cold water bids me shut my mouth. Emerging I hear a well defined laugh,
but not being in the mind to fear the spirits that haunt these wilds, I
make for the base of that boulder and the coveted pool. A moment after
I discover a face bedecked with glasses upon the opposite side of the
brook, and recognize the smiling countenance of a genial member of the
guild looking at me through the willows.
“Oh, is that you?”
To this lucid inquiry I reply in the affirmative. “Where’s Ferguson?”
“At home, I suppose.”
“I thought I heard him fall in the creek.”
I told him I did not think Ferguson had a monopoly of the bathing
privileges of the Thompson and its tributaries.
“Well, I thought it was funny.”
“Thought what was funny?”
“Why, I heard the splash, and supposed it was Ferguson; then I
remembered Ferguson was a church member in good standing.”
I took my revenge by competing with my brother for the contents of that
pool, and beat him by one. But to this day he greets me with a smile.
When I got back to camp I learned that the Governor had been trying to
follow in the footsteps of his father, and had tumbled into the spring.
He had been fished out by the combined efforts of his mother and Mrs.
Ferguson, and I discovered him swathed in a blanket by the kitchen
stove, mad as a hornet; I shook hands with him.