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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
ANGLING TALKS: 
 
 BEING THE 
 
 WinterTalks on Summer Pastimes. 
 
 CONTRIBUTED TO THE "FOREST AND STREAM' 
 
 By GEORGE DAWSON. 
 
 
 
 New York: 
 forest and stream publishing CO. 
 
 1883. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1883, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Forest and Stream Publishing Co, 
 
^^fW 
 
 ZP^ 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 ^T^HE following chapters were written by Mr. Dawson sub- 
 sequently to his retirement from the editorship of the 
 Albany Evening Journal last September. The series was 
 broken off by the author's lamented death in February. 
 
 The ''Talks" attracted wide attention at the time of their 
 pubhcation in the angling columns of the Forest and Streamy 
 and were received with very cordial appreciation. It is 
 thought that their collection into the present more perma- 
 nent form will prove acceptable. 
 
 As a politi<!al writer of conceded power, Mr. Dawson 
 wielded a trenchant pen; when he turned from the conflict 
 of parties to the praise of the favorite pastime of ''simple 
 wise men," his essays^ limpid as the crystal streams, are 
 aglow with the soft summer sunlight and melodious with 
 the songs of birds. When aogling was the theme, he wrote 
 from a full heart and in closest sympathy with the scenes 
 and pm-suits described. These " Talks " are brimful of 
 manly, wholesome sentiment; there is in them all not a 
 particle of cant. Their sincerity and overflowing spirit at 
 once win the reader, and he perforce shares the author's 
 enthusiasm. The effect is magical, like that of the mimic 
 players in Xenophon's Memorabilia: he who reads, if he 
 be an angler, must go a-fishing; and if he be not, straight- 
 way then must he become one. 
 
 Forest and Stream Office, April, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 Simple Wise Men 7 
 
 About Bass 10 
 
 About Grayling 17 
 
 A Memory 24 
 
 Reminiscences 30 
 
 About Some Distinguished Anglers of Our Time . . 38 
 
 About Salmon Fishing 47 
 
 Salmon and Sea Trout Haunts and Habits 53 
 
 Several Relevant Topics 60 
 
 The Game Laws— Angling Mishaps— Sea and Brook 
 
 Trout 65 
 
 Odds and Ends 71 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/anglingtalksbeinOOdawsrich 
 
SIMPLE WISE MEN. 
 Dear solitary groves, where peace does dwell I 
 How willingly could I forever stay 
 Beneath the shade of your embracing greens, 
 Listening to the harmony of warbling birds, 
 Tuned with the gentle murmur of the streams. 
 
 —Rochester, 
 
 I HAVE often had to assure my critical and incredulous 
 friends that it is by no means all of fishing to fish. The 
 appreciative angler, who has inherited or acquired the true 
 spirit of the art is not alone happy while plying his voca- 
 tion, but happy also in the recollection of what has been, 
 and in the anticipation of what is to be. To him memory 
 and hope are equally satisfying — the one luminous with 
 the mellow sunshine of the recent past, and the other all 
 aglow with the assured good cheer of the near future. 
 
 Nor is the pleasure derived from a review of the incidents 
 of the last outing wholly or chiefly associated with its ma- 
 terial results. * 'Casting" and ' 'striking" and ' 'killing" belong 
 to the mere mechanism of the art. Its real fascination lies 
 in what one sees and feels: in mountain and valley; in river 
 and lake ; in sunshine and shadow ; in. the exhilarating at- 
 mosphere and delectable odors of the virgin forest; in the 
 music of singing birds and in the soothing monotone of run- 
 ning waters ; in the hush of the night watches, and in the 
 quiet and repose best found in the ''solitary places" where 
 anglers "most do congregate." 
 
 It strikes m3 like the sound of a trumpet to remember my 
 fights with three-pound trout, five-pound bass or thirty- 
 pound salmon, but I find intenser ecstacy when I recall the 
 circumstances and surroundings of these material experi- 
 ences, the transparent brook, whose ripples were rendered 
 
8 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 dazzling as molten silver by the sunshine glints which fell 
 upon them through the ever-waving branches of the pine, 
 or birch, or hemlock which over-arched it like a benedic- 
 tion; the pellucid waters of river or lake, whose unruffled 
 surface trembled as fly and leader touched its placid bosom ; 
 the deep pool, cast into deeper shadow by the giant boulders 
 near whicb the lordly salmon rests on his upward journey, 
 and the thousand other ''things of beauty" which fill the eye 
 and ravish the senses while watching and waiting, and cast- 
 ing for a ''rise." 
 
 These are the pictures most distinctly photographed upon 
 the memory of the appreciative angler, and which come up 
 most vividly before him when he looks back upon what has 
 been. 
 
 Many pleasures leave a sting behind them. Not so this 
 fascinating pastime. It is as harmless as it is invigorating, 
 and as healthful as it is harmless. There are many things 
 for which I am grateful, but for few things more than for 
 my passion for angling and the reasonable leisure always 
 vouchsafed me to gratify it. 
 
 I say "reasonable leisure," because the most of what time 
 I have given to angling has been abstracted from the grind- 
 ing pressure of a busy life. And the fact has, I am sure, 
 intensified my love for the pastime. As the dawn is most 
 gladly welcomed by the weary watcher who is waiting for 
 the morning, so a holiday brings most pleasure to those who 
 have earned it by hard work or patient service. The **cum- 
 berer of the ground," whose only employment is to "kill time" 
 and battle with enmd, has no holiday. He can no more ap- 
 preciate the luxury of ' 'a rest" than can the surfeited gour- 
 mand the luxury of an appetite. But with the busy man, 
 held to the tread-mill of active life through eleven of the 
 twelve months of the calendar year, it is not so. His holi- 
 day is to him what the open door is to the caged bird, the 
 opporiunity coveted by the Psalmist, to "fly away and be 
 at rest," to "wander far off, and remain in the wilderness," 
 (Psalm 55, 6-7). Because most of my holidays have been 
 thus wrenched from the ever whirling wheel of time, they 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 9 
 
 have brought to me more joy than ''when oil and wine in- 
 creaseth." And as my love of angling has grown with my 
 years, so every recurring holiday has been more impatiently 
 longed for and enjoyed. If all my days had been days of 
 idleness, bringing with them neither consciuus responsibility 
 nor the pressure of duty, I might have lived as unprofitably , 
 and passed through life as wearily as the ennuied pet of 
 fortune, whose indolence and incapacity are the only pro- 
 ducts of his inherited wealth, and, worst of all, I might 
 never have known the delights of that man who finds pleas- 
 ure in the silent woods and loves to go a-fishing. 
 
 In my immediate vicinage there are not a few beside my- 
 self who are fond of the angle — quiet men of gentle habit — 
 simple wise men, as unostentatious as they are merry-hearted, 
 and who carry about wi^h them a clear conscience, a con- 
 tented mind and the elements of perpetual youth. It is their 
 custom to often ' 'forgather*' while waiting for the return of 
 **the time of the singing of the birds," when it will be right 
 to go a-fishing. Among them are men of divers profession 
 — philosophers and educators, merchants and politicians, but 
 not one among them all who would engage in any service, 
 however remunerative or honorable, that would debar him 
 from his annual outing, with rod and reel, for trout or sal- 
 mon. Tnese meetings are only less delightful than the fas- 
 cinating pastime which constitutes the exhaustless theme of 
 conversation. Every phase of the art is discussed, but the 
 experiences of each individual during the just closed season 
 is always first in order. Some of these experiences will enter 
 into these familiar "Winter Talks on Summer Pastimes." 
 
ABOUT BASS. 
 
 When time, which steals our years away, 
 
 Shall steal our pleasures too, 
 The memory of the past will stay. 
 
 And half our joy renew. — Moore, 
 
 ABOUT BASS. 
 
 ^y^HE most highly esteemed member of our coterie devotes 
 ^ his leisure in angling for bass. He was born on the 
 banks of the St. Lawrence, and before he had mastered his 
 alphabet or shed his short-clothes he had become familiar 
 with the haunts if not with the habits of this gamy fish. 
 Indeed, although he has passed his three score years, his 
 * 'memory runneth not to the contrary" when he would not 
 rather fish than eat. The implements he used were primi- 
 tive but effective — of just the form and calibre of those we 
 often now see in the hands of oar juvenile Waltons — less 
 ornamental than uselul, and intended not to *'play" a fish 
 but (o "yank" him, with the least possible ceremony, from 
 his aqueous element. It is not strange, therefore, that he 
 is passionately fond of the pastime and as eager, now that 
 * 'his hoary head is hid in snow, " as when, ' 'in the morn and 
 liquid dew of youth," he gladly accepted the task of keep- 
 ing the family table supplied with the results of his infantile 
 labors. 
 
 There are few busier men in the marts of trade to-day and no 
 man anywhere less likely, from habit or temperament, to 
 squander either time or fortune. He never turns the back 
 of his hand to a friend nor the back of his coat to an enemy, 
 and would sooner lose the best customer on his long list 
 than forego his visits to bass waters in July and October. I 
 never knew a man with a more perfectly balanced double 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 11 
 
 nature. As a merchant he is sedate, reticent and absorbed. 
 As an angler he is cheerful, voluble and merry hearted. 
 Ten words suffice him to sell a hogshead of sugar, but he 
 will talk an hour on the felicity of striking, fighting and 
 killing a five-pound bass. I once asked him the weight of 
 the largest fish he ever caught. His response was : 
 
 *'I am not sure that I can answer your question. I caught 
 what 1 believe to have been my largest bass when we never 
 thought of weighing them. In my early days, when I fished 
 with a hooppole and corresponding appendages, this thing 
 happened to me : A rough dock extended a few feet out 
 into the river in front of my father's farm. It was placed 
 at a point in the river where the current fiowed with mod- 
 erate rapidity over a pebbly bottom. It was not merely just 
 the kind of water bass take to in October, but its attractive 
 qualities were augmented by the moss-covered logs which 
 constituted the base of the rickety old dock from which I 
 was wont to angle. On one memorable occasion — I could 
 not have passed my tenth year— my hook was seized by the 
 largest fish I had ever seen of the bass family. My line was 
 not more than twelve feet in length, and it took my lusty 
 visitor but an instant to run off with the slack and force the 
 barb clean through his ponderous jaw. The result was a 
 leap that made my hair stand on end, and brought n:e to my 
 feet quicker than you could say 'Jack Robinson.' My first 
 impulse was of course to 'j ank' him, but I might as well 
 have tried to *yank' the dock itself from its moorings. Find- 
 ing him bent on mischief, and foreseeing a long fight, I fol- 
 lowed his lead and managed to get on the pebbly beach 
 where I hoped to be able to take him out of the net. But, 
 do my best I could not manage it by any of the processes 
 with which I was familiar, and finding myself dragged 
 toward a slough in which I would have been incontinently 
 swamped if I had attempted to cross it, in sheer despair I 
 made a bee line for the bushes, and very un artistically but 
 very surely ran him ashore — the largest bass, by the common 
 verdict, ever known to have been caught in those waters. 
 I have since landed hundreds of large fish, scores of them 
 
12 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 running from seven to ten pounds, but none of them at all 
 approximating the dimensions of this gamy monster. Mak- 
 ing all due aliowance for the exaggerations of dim distance 
 and the fej vid imagination of inexperienced youth, I have 
 not a doubt now, and never had, that he weighed fully 
 twelve pounds, avoirdupois. That was nearly fifty years 
 ago," he said, with a sigh, *'but the recollection of the inci- 
 dent is as fresh in my memory as any event of the last twelve 
 month. But more than that, I attribute to the ecstasy 
 which came to me from the capture of that fish the passion 
 for angling which has grown with my years, and from 
 which I have derived more real pleasure (to parody an old 
 couplet) than 
 
 'Any modern Caesar feels 
 
 With an obsequious Senate at his heels.' " 
 
 "I suppose," queried one of the party, "other fish than 
 bass were abundant in those days?" 
 
 "Oh, yes! superabundant. Pickerel and muscalonge 
 were 'plenty as blackberries.' But I never took to either. 
 Pickerel were my especial boyhood abhorrence, and how 
 any true brother of the angle' can so much as touch one of 
 the slimy brutes is beyond my comprehension." 
 
 This remark was received with cordial approval, and fresh 
 cigars all round. Not all present were veterans in the art, 
 but none of them had the bad taste to call pickerel fishing 
 a pastime. In commenting upon the subject, the veteran 
 mtr excellence among us spoke thusly : 
 
 "No man ever fell in love with poetry by reading doggerel, 
 nor did any one ever acquire a passion for angling by catch- 
 ing pickerel. It had been my habit from youth up to idle 
 away an hour now and then fishing for perch, sunfish, bull- 
 pouts and low down trash of that sort. But I did that sim- 
 ply as an incident in my summer afternoon rambles by the 
 lake shore and river side, and not because I cared a straw for or 
 hankered after that kind of fishing; but once in my out-of- 
 the way saunterings I fell in with a friend who was patient- 
 ly whipping a trout brook. It was a real pleasure to recline 
 beneath the shadow of a great rock and watch his graceful 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SU2IMER PASTIMES, 13 
 
 ''casts." He had very few responses, but when a response 
 came, the delight he evinced as he played and la ided his 
 four or eight ounce fish was fully shared by myself, and I 
 soon found myself fascinated by what my friend was doing. 
 The stream which ran through a beautiful valley, was cast 
 into deep shadow by the graceful forest trees which lined its 
 borders. Not a sound was heard, save a few bird-notes or 
 the rustling of the leaves as they were moved by the gentle 
 summer breeze which fanned them. The whole scene was 
 a poem, and although I have been in just such places and 
 passed through just such experiences a thousand times; this 
 first picture of the first trout stream 1 ever saw, comes up 
 before me as distinctly and as vividly as it presented itself 
 to my vision forty years ago. 
 
 "Fmding me thus interested in what he was doing, my 
 frirnd, with the kindliness and generosity characteristic of 
 the brotherhood, proffered me his rod for a cnst. I timidly 
 accepted his offer, and tried, very awkwardly, to do as he 
 bade me. You can imagine with what success. He was an 
 expert; 1 was a novice. He could cast fifty feet without an 
 effort. When I essayed so much line as the length of the 
 rod the fly came back upon me as if in derision. But I very 
 soon succeeded in reaching the center of the stream, when 
 there came a leap and a strike which made every nerve in 
 my body quiver like a thrummed harp-string. I stood in 
 motionless ecstacy for a moment, but, as I think, there 
 came to me the inspiration of the born angler, for I played 
 and landed that pound trout with the skill and judgment 
 (my friend being witness) of a veteran. It was the largest 
 trout known to have been taken from that stream in many 
 years. That incident fixed my destiny. Until 1 had that 
 experience fishing had no more attraction for me than any 
 minor amusement with which we "kill time" when we find 
 it a burden. From all of which I merely wish to say that 
 no amount of pickerel or bull pout fishing could ever have 
 inspired in me or in anyone the emotion needful to create the 
 passion for such sort of angling as fascinates while it in- 
 vigorates and augments the wisdom of the wise and makes 
 
14 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 good men better. Such sort of angling inspires something 
 more than rod and line, 'with a worm at one end and a fool 
 at the other. * There must be rivulet and lake, forest and 
 mountain, sunshine and shadow, the music of birds, the mel- 
 ody of running waters, delicate tackling, and the rise and 
 strike and swirl of bass, trout or salmon. Where such 
 things are combined with the love of nature inLerent in the 
 contemplative, mild-mannered and gentle disciples of the 
 historic fathers of the art, angling becomes an irresistible 
 fascination, and gives rest to the weary, vitality to the over 
 wrought, cheerfulness to the despondent, ambling rhythm 
 to the life that now is, and a clearer appreciation of the 
 promised felicities of the life that is to come." 
 
 A quiet ripple of applause greeted this rhapsody of the 
 honored mentor of the happy group, when our bass fisher 
 from the St. Lawrence was asked: 
 
 *'Did you never hook a muscalonge? They are certainly 
 a gamy fish, quite deserving the attention of the most fas- 
 tidious angler. " 
 
 *'0h, yes; 1 have often taken muscalonge on a trawl, and 
 their capture gave me a great deal of muscular exercise, but 
 nothing else. They hook themselves, and all that is required 
 of you is to drag them in, hand over hand, as rapidly as 
 possible. It requires a little skill to get them in your boat 
 without upsetting, but not much more than to do the same 
 thing with a water-soaked log, and hauling them in is very 
 much like hauling in the same weight of deadwood against 
 the current. Yes, I have caught muscalonge of all weights, 
 from five to thirty pounds, but I would rather take a five- 
 pound bass on an eight-ounce fly -rod than a score of musca- 
 longe at the end of a two or three hundred feet trawl." 
 
 *'How do the quantity and weight of bass in the St. Law- 
 rence now compare with forty years ago?'' 
 
 "I do not think the quantity has materially diminished, 
 but they have changed their haunts. I find very few now 
 where they used to be abundant, and places wheie we never 
 had any luck in old times now teem with them. They are 
 not nearly as plenty among the Thousand Islands as they 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 15 
 
 used to be, and no wonder. What with steam yachts and 
 fishing boats, 'thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
 in Yallombrosa,' and net and spear and indiscriminate slaugh- 
 ter, in season and out of season, by thousands of experts 
 and amateur idlers, it is a marvel that the whole species was 
 not long ago exterminated. And the weight of the fish has 
 fallen off in even greater proportion at that point. The 
 capture of a five-pound bass to-day is something to talk 
 about ; forty years ago bass of that weight uniformly made 
 up one-fourth of my catch. The truth is, the fish haven't 
 time to grow — with so many to beguile them, they are caught 
 as soon as they can snap at a hook or rise to a fly. But there 
 are still pleasant and prolific places in the St. Lawrence — I 
 will name some of them to any of you in a whisper — where 
 I never fail to take them as abundantly and of as great 
 weight, with my eight-ounce rod and tiny fly, as I did forty 
 years ago with my mammoth hoop-pole and ponderous tack- 
 ling." 
 
 *'Biit you do not now confine yourself to the St. Law- 
 rence in your search for bass?" was the next query, not be- 
 cause we did not know, but simply to start him off on his 
 favorite hobby and hear him expatiate upon the pleasant 
 places to which he is beguiled during the season when it is 
 right to go a-fishing. 
 
 "By no means," was his reply. "I find it true in angling as 
 in everything else — 'variety's the very spice of life.' With my 
 love of the pastime has grown my love for, and apprecia- 
 tion of, the grand and beautiful in nature, and I have fished 
 for bass in all waters, from the unbroken wilds of Canada 
 to the primitive forests of Northern Michigan. The lakes 
 where they mos!: abound, wherever found, are invariably 
 gems of transparent purity, and are almost as inviting to 
 the appreciative eye because of their picturesque surround- 
 ings as because of what they hold for the angler. Wherever 
 I have gone, whether to the remote North or to the far West, 1 
 have never failed to find what I went for, plenty fish, good 
 sport, magnificent scenery, mental repose and physical re- 
 cuperation. It is a pastime th..t gave moral fibre to tiie 
 
16 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 apostles and aesthetic delectation to the simple wise men of 
 all ages." 
 
 To this, of course, all present gave cheerful response, as 
 will all others who live virtuous lives and like to go a-fishing. 
 
ABOUT GRAYLIKG. 
 
 Hide me, ye forests, in your coolest boTv'rs, 
 Where flows the murmuring brook, inviting dreams, 
 Where bordering hazel overhangs the streams. 
 
 —Gay. 
 
 It 80 happens that no one of the local brotherhood, ex- 
 cept myself, ever fished for grayling. All have frequently 
 resolved to do so, but none of them have yet found leisure 
 to put their resolve into execution. As the next best thing, 
 they require of me an annual recital of my visits to gray- 
 ling waters. I am nothing loth, of course. On the contrary, 
 it is a great pleasure, only less enjoyable than the reality 
 itself. My "talk" this year was on this wise: 
 
 "A few years ago the Au Sable wns the most famous and 
 best stocked grayling river in Northern Michigan. When I 
 became acquainted with it, the fish were very abundant. 
 In an hour's casting at almost any point, a sufficient num- 
 ber could be taken to surfeit any reasonable angler for a 
 day. But, unfortunately, all anglers are not reasonable. 
 While making ready for a few days' sojourn on the river, 
 a party came in with a barrel of fish they had taken, and 
 which they proposed to carry home with them. They may 
 have had a thousand or more, and to secure that number of 
 sizable fish they had probably killed four times as many. 
 With the utmost care the whole lot would doubtless be nau- 
 seatingly stale before tht y reached their destination. The 
 purpose of the party was well enough; for it is always 
 commendable to remember the loved ones at home ; but I 
 never felt that I greatly complimented a friend by present- 
 ing him with a mess of stale fish ; and, except under very 
 favorable circumstances, all fish become stale, however 
 carefully packed, that can only be eaten a week, more or 
 less, after they are taken. Neither grayling, nor trout, 
 
18 WINTER TALKS OK SUMMER PASTIMES 
 
 nor salmon, are in full flavor if they have been so much as 
 twenty-four hours out of water. Many an honest angler 
 has lost caste with his friends because the promise to the ear 
 has been broken to the palate. His praises were based 
 upon the flavor when freshly caught; their judgment upon 
 the flavor when eaten. The original flavor of salmon re- 
 mains longer than that of either trout or grayling. But 
 even salmon greatly deteriorate in two or three days, how^- 
 ever carefully packed. Whenever I bring any of my sal- 
 mon catch home with me, I see to it that they are kept con- 
 stantly encased in fresh ice and that they are not exposed 
 to anything above a frigid temperature until they are 
 passed over into the hands of the cook. In this way I have 
 sometimes enabled my friends to get a fair if not a perfect 
 idea of the exquisite salmon flavor. 
 
 ''Since I first visited the Au Sable it has fallen off in both 
 the number and weight of its fish. But it still affords good 
 sport to those who do not engage in the pastime simply to 
 see how many fish they can kill. 'Catching to count' is a 
 species of vandalism in which no honest angler will engage. 
 Those who do, whatever they may call themselves, have the 
 'low down' spirit of the pot-hunter, although they may not 
 have his dollar-and-cent cupidity. 
 
 ' 'I remember a great many years ago, hearing one of a 
 party of four boasting that they had, in two days, taken 
 twenty -two hundred trout from the waters of 'Stony Clove,' 
 in the Catskills, and I once saw a then famous judge 'scoop- 
 ing up' trout from the same waters with a bed-tick he had 
 either bought, borrowed or stolen from one of the neighbors. 
 ISTo marvel that that once prolific stream is now compara- 
 tively barren. Scores upon scores of other streams have 
 been similarly depleted in this State and elsewhere. But I 
 am happy to know that this unsportsmanlike habit of 'catch- 
 ing to count' is now deemed 'more honored in the breach 
 than in the observance' — thanks to the admonitions of the 
 public press and the better education of the present gener- 
 ation of anglers. 
 
 "On my first visit to the Au Sable I took all the fish I 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 19 
 
 wished within a mile from camp. On my recent visit it 
 took me a whole afternoon, casting over the same ground, 
 to catch enough for supper and breakfast. I was told they 
 were plenty as ever fifteen or twenty miles down stream, but 
 I didn't care to make the journey. I preferred to work for 
 what I caught, having long since ceased to find my highest 
 pleasure in angling where neither skill nor patience is re- 
 quired to fill my creel." 
 
 *ln what," I was asked, "do grayling, in their haunts and 
 habits, differ from trout?" 
 
 "Their haunts are the same, in every material quality. 
 That is, the Au Sable has every feature of a trout stream, in 
 the clearness, flow and temperature of its water, and in its 
 ripples, eddies and pools. To simply look at it, any expert 
 would pronounce it as promising a trout stream as he ever 
 saw. When I began to cast, I expected a rise from a trout 
 rather than from a grayling; but often as I have fished the 
 river I have never yet so much as seen a trout." 
 
 "How do you account for their absence?" was the next 
 query. 
 
 * 'I have been frequently asked that question, but I have 
 never been able to answer it, and the answer is all the more 
 puzzling from the fact that the earlier settlers have a tradi- 
 tion (and some assume to speak from personal knowledge) 
 that there was once trout in the river, and that even now 
 there are both trout and grayling in other waters not far off. 
 If the tradition is truthful in regard to this river, what has 
 become of the trout ? Have the grayling destroyed them? 
 If so, how did it happen, after having dwelt together in unity 
 since the creation, in these latter days 'the one has been 
 taken and the other left?' I know that trout have dis- 
 appeared from a great many streams because of the changed 
 temperature or diminished supply of the water, caused by 
 the artificial drainage of swamps, the absorption or diversion 
 of springs and the denudation of forests. But no such 
 causes have operated here. With isolated exceptions — few 
 and far between — the swamps and springs and forests re- 
 main as they were when *the morning stars sang together.* 
 
20 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 If trout ever were in the river I can conceive of no reason 
 why they should not be there still, and if in waters where the 
 two fish are still found the trout are rapidly disappearing (as 
 is alleged) the mystery is all the more inexplicable. I wish 
 some one better acquainted with grayling and grayling 
 waters than I am would essay to solve this problem. 
 
 "So much for the haunts of the grayling. Now a word 
 about their habits. I find them in just such spots as I 
 would look for trout in the early season — on the riffs, at the 
 foot of rapids, under old logs and in all kinds of shady 
 places, but not often in deep pools. And they are like trout 
 also in the manner in which they take the fly, except that I 
 thought they did not come up as far out of the water as trout 
 sometimes do when they 'rise;' but they take the fly as 
 sharply, shoot off as rapidly and fight as gamely. They 
 make a more stout resistance at the outset than trout of the 
 same weight, chiefly because of the great dimensions of their 
 dorsal fin, which gives them a powerful lever when they 
 shoot a(;ross the current, as they usually do when struck. I 
 do not think, however, they have the trout's 'staying' qual- 
 ities, but they are all game, and afford the angler quite as 
 much sport as trout in any waters. 
 
 "There is one thing about the grayling especially worth 
 mentioning — the peculiar thyme-like aroma they emit when 
 taken. The ancient Greeks recognized this fragrant odor 
 in the fish. 'Hence its generic name Thymalhis, which is 
 derived from Thumalliis, the Greek term for thyme .' [Hal- 
 leck's Gazetteer, p. 335.] I had never heard of this peculi- 
 arity, and for a time I fancied myself moving through a 
 forest-garden of sweet smelling herbs. None of this aroma 
 is perceptible after cooking — except to a very lively imag- 
 ination. In point of flavor, the grayling is the peer of the 
 trout. Indeed, neither in its haunts, its habits, its gamy 
 qualities or its flavor, is it at all inferior to that favorite 
 fish. If not as handsome when landed it is even more beau- 
 tiful in the water. In reeling one in, with the sun at a i-roper 
 angle, its great dorsal fin, with its blended body-hues of olive, 
 brown, rose, liilue, green and pink, reveal all the dazzling 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 21 
 
 colors of the kaleidoscope. I am afraid I sometimes unne- 
 cessarily protracted my 'play* to enjoy the exquisite pictm*e. " 
 
 *'You speak,'* said one of the coterie, **of the Au Sable as 
 having the flow of an ordinary trout stream. The popular 
 idea is that the ^\'hole of Michigan, except its extreme north- 
 ern portion, is practically a uniform plane, with no high 
 hills and no mountain brooks nor swift flowing waters, such 
 as we have in our own State." 
 
 * 'And this popular idea is not far wrong. There are no 
 real mountains in Michigan. Nevertheless, the topography 
 of the center of the lower peninsula is such that many of the 
 streams move with considerable velocity. The current of 
 the Au Sable, for instance, flows from one to four miles an 
 hour, and its water is as pure and as transparent as any 
 mountain stream I ever saw. But when I have said this I 
 have said about all that can be said in its favor. It has 
 very few beautiful scenic features. Its banks are generally 
 low and uninviting. There are not, so far as 1 traversed it, 
 many pleasant camping places directly on its borders. On 
 my last visit I floated several miles before I found a spot where 
 I was willing to pitch my tent, and when I landed an inci- 
 dent occurred that made me wish myself a hundred miles 
 away. It was this : A party of ladies and gentlemen had 
 just broken camp as we landed, and were awaiting their 
 w^agons to take them to the village. While thus waiting, 
 the ladies amused themselves in gathering wild flowers, and 
 in their rambles they had encountered a huge massassaugua, 
 whose glittering eyes and warning rattle had sent them flying 
 and screaming back to camp. Although diligent search 
 was made for the reptile, he remained undiscovered. The 
 incident was followed by the pleasant assurance from my 
 guide, that 'although a good many 'saugas were round, they 
 very seldom bit anyone; or, if they did, a quart of whisky, 
 swallowed at once, was a sure cure.' As I hadn't the 
 whisky I didn't hanker after the bite. My sleep in the 
 woods, with nothing but a few hemlock boughs between 
 my body and mother earth, is usually sound and re- 
 freshing. But upon this occasion I was terribly nervous, 
 
23 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 
 
 and more than once awoke with the fancy that every hair 
 on my head was a massassauga, and the rustling of the 
 leaves the seductive music of their blood-curdling rattle. 
 Fond as I was of fishing, before morning I had resolved 
 that I wouldn't spend another such night for all the grayling 
 in the Au Sable. But 4iow use doth breed a habit in a man!' 
 With the dawn my nervousness took flight, and through all 
 the subsequent nights I spent upon the river, I 'slept the 
 sleep of unconscious innocence.' Still, the knowledge that 
 rattlers are occasionally seen has made me less anxious than 
 I might otherwise be to go after grayling. 
 
 "It is one of tLe glories of the 'North Woods' that they 
 are infested by no venomous reptiles; and during all the 
 years I have visited salmon rivers, I have never seen nor 
 heard of anything of kin to the rattlesnake family. I know 
 of some splendid trout, bass and muscalonge waters north- 
 west from Ottawa which 1 have hesitated about visiting be- 
 cause of their bad reputation in this respect. But even this 
 will not restrain me thiough another summer, if my health is 
 spared." 
 
 "When are grayling in season?" I was asked. 
 
 "The grayling is a spring spawner, and is in season any- 
 where from July to mid-winter. They are, perhaps, in full- 
 est life and flavor in September and October, and thus fur- 
 nish sport to the angler after it is wrong to take trout or 
 salmon. In Michigan there is no more delightful month in 
 the whole year than October. As a rule, it is an unbroken 
 Indian summer, and as, late in the month, deer are in good 
 flesh and are almost as plenty in the woods as grayling are 
 in the water, a combination of the two makes the Au Sable 
 region a very paradise to the sportsman. I may add, also, 
 that there are lakes near by quite as well stocked with bass 
 as the river is with grayling. A region where bass, grayling 
 and deer are all 'in season' at once, and all equally abun- 
 dant, should have a potent drawing power for all who take 
 delight in the use of rod and rifle." 
 
 "Please take us with you the next time you go for gray- 
 ling," was the expressed wl^h cf all present— not excepting 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 23 
 
 my old friend from St. Lawrence, who had never before in- 
 dicated any interest in any fish but his beloved bass. I more 
 than half suspected, however, that his desire to accompany 
 me had its moving cause in my casual intimation that there 
 were inviting bass lakes in the neighborhooi of this famous 
 grayling river. 
 
A ^lEMORY. 
 
 How beautiful this night : the balmiest sigh 
 Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear 
 Were discord to the speaking quietude 
 That wraps this moveless scene. — Shellej/, 
 
 The casual presence of two or three out-of-town veterans 
 of the craft gave a retrospective cast to the conversa- 
 tion at a recent re-union of the local brotherhood. With 
 one of our guests I had tabernacled for twenty years in the 
 wilderness. No man was ever more companionable or had 
 more of the characteristics of true nobility. In physique 
 he was robust as an athlete, but in thought and feeling he 
 was as impressive as a child and as gentle as a woman. He 
 was, withal, as moderate in his sports as he was temperate 
 in his habits. In seeking his own pleasure he never forgot* 
 the pleasure of others, nor did he ever envy others the 
 **luck" he sometimes failed to enjoy himself. Indeed, I 
 have known him to slip away from a promising * 'spring 
 hole" which was his own by right of possession, that a less 
 expert ansler might fish undisturbed and be happy. He is 
 some years my senior, and although still as buoyant in 
 spirit as wnen he would ''set the table in a roar" by the un- 
 ceasing flow of his inimitable humor, he bears, on body and 
 brow, the ear-marks of weariness, if not of decay. When I 
 meet him he always reminds me of my fancy picture of 
 grand old "Kit North*' — that princely king of the inimit- 
 able "Noctes Ambrosianae." He is hke him in his tastes, 
 in his enthusiasm and in his irrepressible love of the gentle 
 pastime which constituted the rarest pleasure of his youtn 
 and the chief joy of his green old age. He is like him also 
 in that he finds unalloyed delight in re-traversing, in imagi- 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 25 
 
 nation, the quiet places, where in his prime and later man- 
 hood, he was wont to go a-fishing. 
 
 And another of our guests was cast from the samo mold, 
 lie had, for. thirty years, without a single intermission, regu- 
 larly visited the North Woods. He knew every foot of that 
 tangled wilderness ; had fished in every accessible brook, 
 river and lake, and had never been known to do aught that 
 did not become an angler and a man. In all my long asso- 
 ciation with him, in town and forest, around the home- 
 hearth and the camp-fire, 1 never but once saw him out of 
 humor. The single exception was when a conceited cockney 
 — who had more of the spirit of the vandal than of the 
 gentle angler — happened along where we were in camp and 
 challenged him to a day's fishing to "count.*' Although 
 proverbially hospitable and never more happy than when 
 entertaining casual guests, he made his contempt for his 
 challenger so unmistakable that the fellow was glad to 
 "vamose the ranch" at the earliest possible moment. If all 
 other honorable angleis were equally emphatic in their de- 
 nunciation of this vile habit, our trout streams would not 
 be so soon depleted. 
 
 After all were comfortably seated around the open fire- 
 place, and our venerable guests and all of us were well down 
 to the middle of our first cigar, the oldest and most honored 
 of the circle said : 
 
 "Well, this is comfortable. This crackling wood fire, this 
 fragrant Havana (only it should be a pipe), and these friendly 
 and familiar faces have knocked thirty years of time into 
 oblivion and dropped me down into the cosy precinctr. of a 
 bark shanty at the foot of Big Tupper. Some of you 
 younger gentlemen were then still in your swaddling clothes, 
 but you and jou and you [naming three of us] w^re there 
 or thereabouts years before and for many years thereafter. 
 Providence has dealt kindly with all of us. My^wn cru£.« 
 has never been without oil, and I never took physic enough 
 to nauseate a cat. In the beautifully expressive language 
 of Scripture, my 'lines have been cast in pleasant places/ 
 I never had an ailment a week's fishing wouldn't cure, ano 
 
26 WINTEB TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES "^ 
 
 I never envied prince, potentate or president so long as I 
 could find the time (and I always did) and had the opportu- 
 tunityto make a 'cast.' I think I am and have been as 
 sympathetic as most men. [''Hear, hear," all around the 
 circle.] I know I have lost many a night's sleep on hearing 
 of the misfortune of some friend who deserved a better 
 fate. I know, too, that I would rather toss a dollar to a 
 beggar than exchange salutations with a king, and I have 
 had both experiences. Indeed, my sympathies have uni- 
 formly been with 'the under dog in the fight,' no matter 
 which was the aggressor. But my heart has always been 
 stirred to its deepest depths when 1 have met a good fellow 
 who was so insensible to his own happiness, so absorbed in 
 his acquisition of wealth, and so inappreciative of the ex- 
 ample of the holy apostles as never to have cultivated a 
 taste for the angle. ["Hear, hear," and a gentle ripple of 
 applause.] Why, what is life? and what is the prime 
 object of living? In one respect 'life is a vapor'; but i1, is 
 something more. It embodies all the elements of an active 
 verb— to be, to do, to suffer (as little as possible) and to 
 enjoy (all you can). That is a condensed epitome of life, as 
 I understand it. And what is the object of living? Simply 
 to do good and be happy. The one is dependent upon the 
 other. They are inseparable and indivisible; and 'what 
 God has joined together let no man put asunder.' I know 
 that an old Scotch philosopher — afid no class of philosophers 
 blend more hard sense with their incomprehensible meta- 
 physics—has said that the root of all happiness lies in 'a 
 clear conscience and open bowels.' So far as that aphorism 
 goes it is incontestably sound and profoundly sensible. But 
 there is a link missing. I insist that however clear and 
 clean one»may keep his conscience, and however regularly 
 the complicated machinery of his 'fearfully and wonder- 
 fully mad^' system may do its office, it is impossible that he 
 should ever be qualified for the highest good or reach the 
 highest possible pinnacle of earthly felicity, unless he has 
 the contemplative mind, the gentle spirit, the poetic taste, 
 the quiet habit and the sturdy common sense of the man 
 
C WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 27 
 
 who loves to go a-fishing. [* 'Bravo 1" ''Well put," with 
 approving smiles and affirmative head-nods from all of us.] 
 !Now, you see, 1 know what I am talking about. I was ten 
 years old before I killed a trout. If my early education 
 had not been neglected I would have begun fishing at five. 
 The loss of those five years have always been a soarce of re- 
 gret to me, and 1 more than once questioned my father's kind- 
 ness because, with all his own love for, and appreciation of, 
 the sport, 'he kept his only son, myself, at home' during 
 these five years, while he himself made his weekly excur- 
 sions to the trOut streams in our immediate neighborhood. 
 I am told that during those five lost years I was delicate, 
 morose, flippant and querulous. No wonder. My inhsr^ 
 ited angling blood was in rebellion against the cruel restraint 
 imposed upon me. But with a carte blanche at ten to fish 
 when and where I pleased, the whole mental and moral 
 structure of my being was changed, and I became ductile, 
 obedient and happy ; and 1 have been fairly good and very 
 happy ever since, but never so happy as when I have had a 
 'lodge in some vast wilderness,' through which course melo- 
 dious trout brooks or roaring salmon rivers." [Applause.] 
 
 When fresh cigars were lit and the blazing fire replenished, 
 our venerable friend was reminded that he had not yet told 
 us about the pleasant time he had in his bark shanty at the 
 foot of Big Tupper thirty years ago. 
 
 "Thank you for the reminder. Well, you see, no matter 
 how fond one becomes of the woods in general, or how 
 happy he may be wherever there are plenty fish and 
 pleasant scenery, he will get a special fondness for some 
 special spot, and will never deem his outing comi)lete with- 
 out paying it a visit. I always had several such pet places, 
 and Cole's Point, at the toot of Big Tupper, was one of 
 them. I came to like the spot not alone because of its pleas- 
 ant surroundings — although that counted for something — 
 but also because, within easy distance, there were some of 
 the best casting places, during the early season, to be found 
 anywhere in the woods, notably the Point itself, Peter's 
 Rock and Lothrop's chopping. My acquaintance with these 
 
28 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMEB PASTIMES. 
 
 localities began nearly forty years ap:o, when the regular 
 visitors to those waters could be counted upon your two 
 thumbs and eight fingers, and when you could float fifty 
 miles without meeting a white man or encountering a house. 
 There are now, I am told, a hundred places of entertain- 
 ment within the boundaries of the grand old forest where 
 we used to pitch our tents without fear of molestation from 
 cockney anglers or 'Murray's fools.' As I was saying, Cole's 
 Point was one of my favorite resorts. The occasion to 
 which my memory drifted just now was only distin- 
 guished from many another because of two or three inci- 
 dents which rendared it especially memorable. I was ac- 
 companied by two of the most companionable fellows I ever 
 met. They were born anglers, and carried with them all 
 the scholarly tastes and joyousness of spirit characteristic of 
 the old masters of the art. Dull care never obtruded his ugly 
 visage within the precincts of their tabernacle. Although 
 they were masters of all the sciences, and had earned all the 
 tMes at the disposal of all the schools, they were as free 
 from guile and ostentation as a true angler is from cruelty 
 or conceit. While we were in camp the moon was at her 
 full, so that the nights were as luminous as the early gloam- 
 ing, and as serene and beautiful as the placid waters of the 
 great lake which stretched out inimitably before us. As we 
 sat in rapt ecstacy outside our primitive camp looking up 
 and out upon the unclouded sky, the silvery sheen of the 
 quiet waters and the rugged bluffs which loomed up in the 
 clear moonlight like giant warders at the portals of the lake, 
 no sound broke upon the ear save the low ripple of the tiny 
 rapids just below us, and the occasional whistle of some be- 
 lated wood-bird who had missed his mate. You know I 
 have been a world-wide wanderer. There is not a historic 
 painting, nor a chronicled statue, nor a noted palace, from 
 the Hudson to the Bosphoi-us, that I have not seen. I have 
 slept upon an Alpine glacier, have sat in wonderment and 
 awe beneath the ponderous dome of St. Peters, have looked 
 down from the belfry of St. Paul's, have traversed the 
 Rhine, have bowed my head at the entrance of the Golden 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 29 
 
 Gate, have wandered tlirougli the 'garden of the gods/ and 
 taken in all the exquisite beauty and majestic grandeur of the 
 Yosemite Valley, but my soul was never so thiilled as dur- 
 ing these never-to-be-forgotten nights of ecstacy and beauty 
 at the foot of Big Tnpper, when, superadded to what I saw 
 and felt, my two companions made the dense solitude vocal 
 with 'the concord of sweet sounds,' breathed from cornet 
 and flute, played with a sweetness and harmony which 
 proved them as much the masters of those instruments as 
 they wore of Greek and beile-lettres and of rod and reel. 
 Much that I have seen and enjoyed is forgotten, but this 
 memory of thirty years ago remains as fresh and vivid as 
 any pleasurable emotion that has come to me within the past 
 fortnight. Oh, no; as our respected chronicler of the pleas- 
 ures of our favorite pastime has said, *it is not all of fishing 
 to fish,' and he who thinks so has not yet learned the first letter 
 in the alphabet of the true angler. [Ripples of applause] 
 
 "Did some one ask me what sport we had? In those days 
 it required more skill to keep from 'striking' than to get a 
 •rise.' If we only went to fish, we need not then to have 
 penetrated into the heart of the forest to get what we went 
 for. But fishing was but an incident then as always. The 
 freedom, the rest, the recuperation, the ten thousand delights 
 which come to mind and heart from mountain and river and 
 lake and forest, infinitely more than the mere act of taking 
 tish, constituted and still constitute the chief charm of 
 these summer rdmbles. As my friend here has said before me, 
 among the multitude of blessings vouchsafed me by a kind 
 Providence, I count my passion for this delightful pastime 
 as chief. If not a better, I am sure I have been a happier 
 man, because, during all my long life, I have found pleasure 
 in the woods and loved to go a-fishing." ["So say we, all 
 uf us," and a hearty hand-shake all round followed the re- 
 hearsal of this pleasant memory. It was the preface to 
 many another like recital, which held the merry-hearted 
 coterie together far into the "wee, sma' hours ayont the twal, " 
 and which I may make "of record" before "reeling up" 
 these rambling "Talks on Summer Pastimes."] 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 I have written for lovers of the gentle art, and if this which I have 
 written falls into other hands, let him who reads understand it is not 
 for him. — W. C. Prime. 
 
 'X^HESE "Talks" are written on the presumption that they 
 -*- will only be read by the ''simple wise men" who can sym- 
 pathize with their theme and who are in accord with their 
 sentiments. To those who know nothing of the art or of 
 its delightful possibilities, they will be "as sounding brass 
 or tinkling cymbals." But to the mild-mannered and 
 merry-hearted brotherhood they may have something of the 
 music of forest birds and the melody of running waters. 
 
 Not only has every pastime its special attractions, but its 
 votaries have their special reasons for the high estimate 
 in which they hold it. Others may, but they never weary 
 of talking about il. What is true of other pastimes is pre- 
 eminently true of angling. No other affords so many inci- 
 dents that it is a pleasure to remember and a greater pleas- 
 ure to recount to appreciative and sympathizing listeners. 
 The "memory" which formed the theme of my last "Talk" 
 was followed by other reminiscences, one of which is sub- 
 joined. 
 
 Several years ago I found that I had not time to make my 
 usual August trip to the North "Woods ; but 1 knew very well 
 if I allowed the month to pass without enjoying a "cast" 
 somewhere I would find my mental machinery sadly out of 
 joint. I had tried it once and remembered the result. I 
 cannot gay that I suffered any real physical detriment, but 
 I evinced neither good temper nor good manners (and they 
 always hunt in couples) until the fever subsided with the 
 close of the season. 
 
 And this is the experience of all anglers who have had a 
 taste of the invigorating and exhilarating delights that come 
 to those who have even passable skill with rod and reel. 
 Perhaps something of this feeling may pass into the experi- 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 81 
 
 ence of those who have only felt the excitement incident to 
 the capture of fish with the rougher implements of the craft. 
 * 'Still-fishing" with bait, or trolling with * 'spoon" or min- 
 now is better than no fishing, as ** 'tis better to have loved 
 and lost than never to have loved at all. '* But that sort of 
 fishing never reaches to the dignity of a passion. The out- 
 ing necessarv to engage in it may be missed, but no great 
 disappointment will be felt if circumstances compel a resort 
 to some other mode of diversion. But with those who have 
 loni)r enjoyed the ecstasy of fly-casting it is not so. To be 
 satisfying, their ''vacation" must carry them to trout, bass, 
 grayling or salmon waters. No other harmless or healthful 
 recreation takes so strong a hold upon one's spirit or imagi- 
 nation, because there is no other which meets so fully the 
 mental, physical and aesthetic demands of mind and heart. 
 In following the brooks and rivers which wend their way 
 through forest and mountain and valley, where solitude has 
 her abode and where rustling leaves and singing birds and 
 the rippling music of running waters fill the air with per- 
 petual melody, the appreciative angler, "born so," as good 
 old Izaak has it, finds mental repose, physical invigoration, 
 "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the gar- 
 ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." It is because 
 these qualities inhere in the pastime — are identical with and 
 inseparable from it — that it is so irresistibly fascinating to 
 its votaries. They can be proffered no substitute, because, 
 Kke matchless beauty, "only itself can be its parallel." 
 
 On the occasion to which I have referred, my usual two 
 weeks' visit to the "spring holes" between Ray Brook and 
 Setting Pole Rapids, where I have had such sport as lifted 
 me into the seventh heaven of delectation, was reduced to 
 a three-days' sojourn where the whistle of the locomo- 
 tive could be heard, and where, if need be, a telegraph mes- 
 sage could reach me. It was, I thought, a pitiful substitute 
 for my old-time free and easy swing in the grand old woods, 
 where, for so many years, a score of good fellows constituted 
 the sum total of intruders upon its then unbroken solitude. 
 Ah, those were days to be remembered — when trout were 
 
82 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 plenty and anglers, few, wnen you could float from Mar- 
 tin's to Raquette Falls, and from Blue Mountain Lake to 
 the Old Forge, in midsummer, as undisturbed by human 
 companionship as if you were astraddle of the highest peak 
 of the Rocky Mountains, when tliere wasn't so much as a 
 log shanty on the whole line of the Fulton range or (with 
 one exception) from Bartlett's away down to Downie's Land- 
 ing. Most of the good fellows whom I was wont to meet 
 in those far-back summer rambles have made their last 
 **cast," and are now, I trust, enjoying infinitely higher fe- 
 licity on the banks of that **pure river of water, clear as 
 crystal," so graphically portrayed by the lonely seer upon 
 the Isle of Patmos Some of them — alas! how few — still 
 remain to illustrate the beneficent influence of the gentle art 
 upon the mind and heart and physique of its happy brother- 
 hood. Here is a note just received from one of them. Al- 
 though to him the grasshopper may have become a burden, 
 the golden bowl is not yet broken, nor has his good right 
 arm yet lost its cunning. His heart still pulsates with good 
 will to all men. especially to those who "deal justly, walk 
 humbly," and love to go a-fishing. He has the gentle spirit 
 of the dear old masters, and whether, hereafter, his annual 
 visits shall be many or few to the pleasaut places where 
 he has for thirty years found retirement, recreation, re- 
 pose, and a higher conception of the munificence and loving 
 kindness of the Heavenly Father, the recollection of his 
 friendly courtesies and quiet ways will ever be a pleasant 
 memory to those who have often met him in the woods and 
 enjoyed his kindly hospitality: 
 
 "Keeseville, Essex Co., N. Y., November 27, 1882. 
 "^f^/ dear Z)..* 
 
 "I desire to express to you the satisfaction and pleasure already 
 received from reading the two articles from your pen published in 
 Forest and Stream. I trust they will be continued through all the 
 bleak months of our weary winter. May I ask you, before you 'reel 
 up,' to give us a 'Talk' on the dear old North Woods of the Saranac 
 region and thereabouts? I very often recall the many times we have 
 met there, and they are hallowed in memory. Last spring's trip 
 made my thirtieth e.nniial pilgrimage to those blessed haunts, but 
 not with my usual enthusiasm. I miss old friends like yourself. As 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 33 
 
 you can readily imagine, many changes have occurred in thirty 
 years, and of many who were once our forest companions, 'there 
 only remains to us,' as you have said elsewhere, 'the recollection of 
 their pleasant ways and joyous companionship.' It makes me sad 
 to remember bow many have passed away with whom I have taken 
 'sweet counsel' in the dear old woods, but whom I will see no more 
 this side the dark river. Yours, very truly, J. R. R." 
 
 With but tliree days at my certain disposal, Manchester 
 and its adjacent waters seemed the most available. I had 
 heard of the pleasant valley through which clear streams 
 meandered, and I found it all it was claimed to be, "beauti- 
 ful for situation," and a very paradise in itself and in its 
 surroundings. If I had had no other purpose than to fish, I 
 need not have left the valley. I filled my creel as quickly 
 as I desired. The weather was superb, the water was in 
 prime condition, the responses were prompt, and the weight 
 of the fish and their gamey qualities even more inspiriting 
 than their numbers. But 1 wished to explore as well as to 
 angle ; to fill my lungs with the pure ozone of the mountains, 
 as well as to till my creel with the speckled denizens of the 
 pearly brooks; to camp out, if but for anight, as well as to fish. 
 I had heard of a tiny lake perched upon the summit of an 
 adjacent mountain many hundreds of feet above the valley, 
 difficult of access, as retired as any peak in the Coloradoes, 
 and well stocked with large trout always available to those 
 who had the skill to catch them. I was prompt to avail my- 
 self of the proffer of an escort thither, and in the early gloam- 
 ing I found myself casting in vain for a rise. At the end of a 
 half hour the full moo\i came up over the tree tops. As the 
 unclouded rays fell upon the fair bosom of the ruffled 
 waters, I realized something of what Tennyson meant when 
 he wrote of "the shimmering glimpses of a stream." The 
 tiny waves looked like rippling rolls of molten silver, and 
 when the moon had reached an elevation where her beams 
 could flash full upon the face of the forest-bordered lakelet, 
 it made up a picture which has remained with me through 
 all these intervening years. It was for this and such as this, 
 equally as for the delight afforded by the pastime itself, 
 that I had alwajs made my semi-annual visits to the quiet 
 
34 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 places where trout and contemplative anglers are pleased to 
 forgather. 
 
 But this beautiful picture, gorgeous and fascinating as it 
 was, did not fill full the measure of my desire and expecta- 
 tion. While I had been casting and watching the silent 
 march of **the silver empress of the night," the fire had 
 been kindled, the pork had been sliced, and the frying pan 
 rtood ready to do its office, but no trout had been taken. 
 The idea of going supperless to bed was not pleasant. The 
 long tramp and keen mountain air had given me an appetite 
 more biting than the chilly atmosphere with which we were 
 environed. I had resolved to retire discomfited after an- 
 other cast when I bethought me that what the scarlet ibis and 
 brown hackle had failed to accomplish, might, under the 
 favorable conditions of the hour, be effected by a well -poised 
 dusty miller; and I was uot mistaken. The first cast was 
 followed by a rise. In five minutes a two-pound trout was 
 ready for dissection, and in twenty minutes, eight others, 
 aggregating nine pounds, had been taken in out of the wet, 
 wherewith I was content and reeled up for the night. 
 
 The repast that followed was fragrant, luscious and abun- 
 dant—such a feast as always comes to an honest angler when 
 ''good digestion waits on appetite.'* I cannot, however, 
 say as much for my night's repose. A hastily constructed 
 brush canopy sufficiently protected us from the fast-falling 
 dew, and a thick layer of hemlock boughs — emitting an 
 aroma as fragrant as the fabled nectar of the gods — was 
 such a couch as kings might envy. When thus disposed 
 sleep always comes to me without wooing, and it would 
 have done so on this occasion but that my inexperienced 
 companion, who had never before camped out, chattered so 
 incessantly that I sought revenge by reciting every blood- 
 curdling story I had ever heard or could invent about the 
 mortal peril that besets whoever has the temerity to invade 
 the haunts of venomous reptiles or ravenous beasts. The 
 brief intervals of silence were broken by mysterious sounds, 
 which I knew to be caused by the flight of prowling night 
 birds, the gnawing and scratching of hungry grubs, or the 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 35 
 
 stealthy tread of fox or rabbit, but which he, in his nervous 
 excitability, magnified into the unpleasant proximity of 
 bear or wild cat. His frequently repeated **Hist!" "What's 
 that!" had become monotonous, and I was passing off into 
 peaceful slumber when 1 was startled by a yell from my 
 timid friend which could only have been born of genuine 
 fright induced by actual contact with some tangible object. 
 If his alarm was not justified it was excusable, for our 
 couch had been invaded by a prowling woodchuck, who 
 had been attracted by the fragrance of the discarded frag- 
 ments of our evening feast. This intrusion (when the in- 
 truder took flight, for he stood not upon the order of his 
 going, but went at once) was followed by profound silence 
 on th3 part of my friend and by blissful unconsciousness 
 on my own part, until a full chorus of forest minstrels and 
 the slanting rays of the morning sun admonished me that it 
 was time to try the virtue of a morning cast 
 
 And I cast, but nothing came of it. There was not a rip- 
 ple on the surface of the water, and as far as I could reach 
 it seemed like casting upon a floor of glass. Every moment 
 the sun glare was extending, and before I had become en- 
 tirely hopeless of a rise, the whole lake shone like a great 
 mass of burnished silver. I was soon encouraged, however, 
 by a * 'break" some hundred feet beyond my cast. As there 
 was neither boat nor raft available, the "break" might as 
 well have been a hundred miles away as where it was. I 
 did my best to entice the sportive brutes shoreward, but it 
 was like "calling spirits from the vasty deep," — they 
 wouldn't come. The more I cast the more they jumped, 
 but always at an unapproachable distance. Of course it was 
 provoking, and of course I looked about for some mode by 
 which I could circumvent and turn the tables upon my 
 sportive tantalizers. I discovered near by two dry logs — 
 barely two — which, if properly joined together, would suf- 
 fice to bear me up if carefully manipulated. Withes were 
 procured, hastily twisted and used in the conventional way 
 known to all old woodsmen. A few minutes sufliced to 
 finish the work after a fashion, and while the fish were still 
 
m WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 * 'making the water boil" with their sportive antics, my fly 
 dropped in the very center of their circle, and was taken be- 
 fore it had fairly touched the water. Th© movement of 
 fisher and fish was spontaneous. But the fish had the ad- 
 vantage. The lake gave him ''scope and verge enough" to 
 do his best, while I stood poised upon a structure so frail 
 that its dislocation and engulf ment was threatened by the 
 slightest motion. To play the fish was not so difficult, but 
 how to land him without toppliug over was a problem whose 
 solution troubled me not a little. But it was accomplished 
 — not once, but many times in quick succession. If con- 
 science makes cowards of us all, impunity often makes us 
 inexcusably presumptuous. My good luck had this effect 
 upon myself, and while playing what afterward proved 
 to be a two-pound trout, I found the two sticks which 
 formed my raft slowly diverging. Here was a di- 
 lemma. It wouldn't do to drop my rod and risk 
 the loss of my fish ; nor would it do to allow either log 
 to take its departure without an effort to prevent it. I soon 
 discovered that one of the withes had broken, and my only 
 hope was to use my feet to hold the raft together until I 
 could finish my fight and paddle ashore. But my efforts in 
 this direction rather tended to widen the breach than close 
 it, and while my fish was at his best I found myself in the 
 attitude of the Colossus of Khodes or the American eagle, 
 who stood with one foot on the Pacific and the other on the 
 Atlantic while he dipped his beak in the majestic Missis- 
 sippi. My straddle was simply prodigious, and it contin- 
 ued to broaden with ever-increasing momentum until my 
 feet seemed as remote from each other as the Hebrides from 
 the Rocky Mountains. There was, in short, a great gulf 
 between them, and I was rather pleased than otherwise 
 when I found them once more brought into close proximity 
 and rendering me useful service in my efforts to swim 
 ashore — which, in this instance, I found to be even more 
 easy than "rolling off a log." But during all these novel 
 experiences and unexpected mishaps the "ruling passion" 
 did not forsake me. I may not have been able all the timo 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 37 
 
 to keep a **taut line" upon my fish, but I held my rod, 
 and so soon as I could touch bottom I resumed the fight and 
 landed my two-pound trout as coolly as if nothing out of 
 the ordinary had happened since he rose to my fly. 
 
 A rousing fire and a luscious breakfast soon put every- 
 thing to rights; and with a better constructed raft and a 
 keener zest for the sport, I resumed my fishing, and in an 
 hour or two had a full creel with which to replenish the 
 larder of friends in waiting at the foot of the mountain. 
 
ABOUT SOME OF THE DISTINGUISHED ANGLERS 
 OF OUR TIME. 
 
 Though he in all the p( ople's eyes seemed great, 
 
 Yet greater he appeared in his retreat. 
 
 — Sir J. Denhatn. 
 In the long catalogue of honorable anglers are the names 
 of apostles, kings, princes, priests, poets, bishops, states- 
 men and philosophers — men who made history, ruled 
 nations, honored the church, dignified humanity, and left 
 the impress of their scholarship upon all the centuries. 
 And what they did they did all the better — more wisely, 
 more humanely, and with a higher conception of the sacred 
 character of the work assigned them — because they had the 
 contemplative habit, proverbial patience and gentle spirit of 
 the simple wise men who love to go a-fishing. 
 
 It has been my fortune to know and to have ''camped 
 out" with some of the well-known men of our own time, 
 and I have always found them as companionable and merry- 
 hearted as the most humble of the brotherhood. If there 
 was any difference in the zest and enthusiasm with which 
 each class plied their vocation, it arose from the fact that to 
 the former the pastime was in greater contrast with the 
 social and ofiicial conventionalities which held them more 
 closely in their chafing trammels, and so gave them a 
 keener appreciation of the fre(»dom which came to them in 
 the quiet places to which their love of angling led them. 
 To all such an ''outiug" was not simply a holiday; it was 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 39 
 
 the unlocking of their official prison house ; the lifting of a 
 leaden weight from their weary brain ; a translation from 
 work and worry to needed rest and absolute freedom and 
 repose. The contrast between what they endured and what 
 they enjoyed — between the red-tape technicalities of official 
 life and the rollicking abandon permissible in the cosy camp 
 on trout stream or salmon river — is the contrast between 
 purgatory and paradise ; and when the rebound comes it is 
 felt in every cell of the brain, in every fibre of the body and 
 in every pulsation of the heart. I knew just how a Chief 
 Justice felt when, coming in from our salmon pools to lunch, 
 he cast himself at full length beneath the welcome shade of 
 a spreading pine, with face aglow and his voice tremulous 
 with devout thanksgiving and exclaimed : 
 
 " 'Begone, my cares, I give ye to the winds.* 
 
 **Ah! old man, old man, this indeed is rest." 
 
 "Yes, my dear fellow, it is pleasant and — jolly," was my 
 response, as I ripped off a piece c f fresh hemlock bark to 
 serve as a table for our humble repast. 
 
 These ripples of ecstacy; these indefinable heart-zephyrs; 
 these foretastes of a higher felicity, which drop into the 
 soul like golden sun-glints through the quivering leaves of 
 the waving forests, are among the unpurchasable luxuries 
 of the appreciative angler, and come to no other in such full 
 measure. 
 
 Vice-President Wheeler is one of the distinguished anglers 
 of our own time. His visits to the Saranacs and adjacent 
 waters were and still are as regular as the seasons. His 
 home is in close proximity to the best fishing grounds in 
 the State, and he has grown up as familiar with all of them 
 as he is with the various rooms in his own domicile. He 
 has been a member of our State Legislature, has repeatedly 
 served his district in the House of Representatives, been 
 Vice-President of the United States, and a busy man al- 
 ways, but he has never intermitted his annual visits to the 
 beautiful lakes which make a terrestrial paradise of the far- 
 famed Adirondacks. When, years ago, he was talked of for 
 the high position which he subsequently filled, I ventured 
 
40 WINTER TALKS ON SU2IMEB PASTIMES, 
 
 the prediction that he would take no office that would pre- 
 clude him from these annual visits to angling waters. In 
 18^6 **Hayes and Wheeler" were the candidates of their 
 party, and 1 was proclaimed a false prophet. But I not 
 only knew my man, but the fascinating pastime of which 
 he was a votary, and the result vindicated my piediction. 
 He more than once mysteriously disappeared from his place 
 as presiding officer of the Senate, and while others were guess- 
 ing his whereabouts, his more intimate friends knew he had 
 gone a-fishing. His robes of place were laid aside for the 
 garb of the angler, and the restraints and formalities of his 
 office for the quiet and freedom which can be found nowhere 
 so perfectly as in the primitive forests and on the crystal 
 lakes and flowing rivers where the veteran angler finds his 
 most refreshing rest and highest delectation. 
 
 Although the ex-Yice-President is as skilled in all the 
 mysteries of the craft as he is in all the intricacies of the 
 civil law, and with all the prof oundest principles of states- 
 manship, he affects the troll rather than the fly, and is 
 oftener seen leisurely floating over the silvery surface of 
 the beautiful lakes than casting in either brook or river. 
 While this mode of angling does not come up to the highest 
 standard of the art, and fails to satisfy the more ardent, 
 robust and enthusiastic of the brotherhood, it is full of 
 attraction and affords supreme delight to the more repose- 
 ful and contemplative. Indeed, the most enthusiastic of 
 the craft — even those who fancy they would soon weary of 
 the sport if they could not ''cast" for their prey— are often 
 lured by the pleasure available to those who spend the 
 sunny summer days casting along the picturesque shores 
 and among the fairy-like islands of our charming inland 
 waters. Every measure of the oar reveals some new bit of 
 landscape to be admired. Sunshine and shadow are ever 
 busy painting pictures of ever-varying beauty. The gentle 
 summer zephyrs float down from the forest-crowned moun- 
 tains like heavenly benedictions. The balmy air, as free 
 from the germs of disease and the odors of decay as the 
 mind of the angler is from strife and contention, fills his 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 41 
 
 lungs as full of invigorating elixir as his heart is of grati- 
 tude and good will. Those who have felt all this— and all 
 of us have — will not think the less of our distinguished 
 fellow citizen because he mostly angles with the troll, and 
 seeks Jiis pleasure and recreation in moving to and fro upon 
 the lakes, which sit like sparkling gems among the everlast- 
 ing hills of the far-famed Adirondacks. I hope, when my 
 right hand shall forget its cunning, and when from old age 
 or decrepitude I shall have fought my last battle on salmon 
 waters, to be able to glide gently toward the dark river in 
 the quiet and peaceful and happy way in which my honored 
 friend has so long found his highest pleasure and most 
 perfect repose. 
 
 Gen. Arthur, now President of the United States, is also a 
 well known "brother of the angle." He has all the best 
 qualities of the most famous disciples of the gentle art. He 
 is patient, courteous, companionable, enthusisastic and 
 expert. He is, withal, an ardent lover of all that is grand 
 and beautiful and picturesque in nature. As I have said of 
 another I can say of him, in all that moves our sensibilities 
 and kindliest sympathies he is as impressible as a child and 
 as gentle as a woman. In spite of the rough school in which 
 he has been a life-long pupil, his heart is * 'open as day to 
 melting charity," and his poetic tastes enable him always 
 and everywhere, to see 
 
 *'Sermons in stones, books in running brooks, 
 And good in everything." 
 
 His love of the art is the outgrowth of his aesthetic sus- 
 ceptibilities, and this love will remain with him long after 
 the dazzling glories of office shall have lost their charm, be- 
 cause the beauties of nature are as varied and exhaustless as 
 the munificence and majesty of their beneficent author. 
 The pleasurable emotions they excite, like the eternal prin- 
 ciple mysteriously linked to our finite humanity, never die. 
 Than Gen. Arthur no man can pitch a tent more quickly, 
 adorn a camp more tastefully, cast a fly more deftly, fight a 
 salmon more artistically or bring him to gaff more gracefully. 
 I owe to his courtesy the opportunity to kill my first salmon, 
 
43 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 have been with him in every phase of an angler's experience, 
 and know him to be the peer of the most accomplished and 
 most appreciative of the masters of the art. It has been his 
 good fortune to kill the largest salmon ever taken with a fly 
 on this continent ; and it was because I knew his intense 
 fondness for the pastime that I appreciated how deeply he 
 felt his disappointment when, after his nomination as Vice- 
 President, I tendered him my congratulations, he said: '*I 
 thank you, of course, but I am afraid that, for this summer 
 at least, it will keep me away from our grand old river. " A 
 pastime that could be remembered and spoken of under 
 8uch circumstances must have a strong hold upon one's 
 affections. I am sure he looks forward hopefully to the day 
 when, relieved of the cares of his high office, he will be once 
 more permitted to pitch his tent upon the Restigouche or 
 Cascapedia and angle for salmon. 
 
 Gen. Spinner, ex-United States Treasurer, an octogenarian 
 with whom old Time has dealt very gently, and whose sign 
 manual is a type of his robust integrity and sturdy patriot- 
 ism, is also one of the brotherhood. Long before his home 
 friends sent him to Congress or President Lincoln made him 
 the custodian of the treasury chest of the nation, he had be- 
 come intimate with the best angling waters of Northern 
 New York. With him the pastime was a delight, less be- 
 cause of the flsh to be taken than because of the pleasant 
 places to which their capture led him. He was a born 
 botanist as well as a born angler, and during his later years 
 he was quite as happy gathering the rare plants and ferns 
 and flowers he met with in his forest walks as in catching 
 trout. I have journeyed with him through the whole length 
 and breadth of our Northern forest, and I never journeyed 
 with a more happy or entertaining companion. While in 
 Washington through the terrible years of the war, he found 
 needed rest in frequent rambles along the Potomac gathering 
 flowers and angling for bass. His office, from which he 
 distributed thousands of millions of dollars without the loss 
 of a farthing, was a perfect museum of floral and botanical 
 specimens and of all the paraphernalia which go to make up 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 43 
 
 fin angler's kit. And now, at his home in Florida, although 
 he long ago passed the alloted life of man, the same habits 
 remain with him and the same pleasures come to him from 
 these cherished pastimes of his earlier years. He would, per- 
 haps, all the same have illustrated in his life the virtues of 
 an honest man if Providence had not, in addition to a vigor- 
 ous constitution, given him the temperament and taste of an 
 angler, but the fact that he is an angler we may be sure 
 abstracts nothing from the high qualities which enter into 
 the mental and moral structure of an honest man. May he 
 yet live many years to fish with leaders as tough as his con- 
 stitution, and with rods as elastic as his humor and as stable 
 as his fame. 
 
 Judge Edmunds, the distinguished Senalor from Vermont, 
 has been for many years a regular visitor to salmon 
 waters. He has fished many of the best rivers of the Prov- 
 inces, and is as expert as he is enthusiastic in the practice of 
 the art. Of late years his daughters have accompanied him 
 and shared with him the great pleasure to be derived from 
 these annual visits to the quiet places where salmon and sea- 
 trout gather in their season for the delectation of the angler. 
 One of his daughters was long an invalid, and although she 
 was temporarily benefited by these summer sojourns in the 
 silent woods, she recently ''entered into rest." Hereafter 
 the pleasure the honored statesman may derive from his 
 angling excursions will be hallowed by the memory of the 
 heart-gladdening companionship of the "loved and lost." 
 
 Judge Folger, the present Secretary of the Treasury, is 
 also fond of the angle. A coterie of genial gentlemen have 
 lodges on the banks of Geneva Lake. The Judge is chief 
 among them in skill and enthusiasm. He has been hoping 
 for years to accompany Judge Hadley, his near neighbor 
 and intimate friend, in his annual raid upon the king of 
 fishes; but he has always had the misfortune to be so tied 
 down by the galling withes of public responsibilities {hat 
 he has never been able to pass beyond the metes and bounds 
 of his official parish for the length of time needful to make 
 the trip and enjoy the longed-for luxury. A seat will be 
 
44 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 reserved for him in our cosy tent until a kind Providcnc3 
 shall enable him, unhampered by any special obligation to 
 an exacting public, to try his 'prentice hand on the lordly 
 salmon. 
 
 Although Gov. Seymour may not be technically classed 
 among the brotherhood, he has the simple habits and aes- 
 thetic tastes of the contemplative angler. No one has a 
 nicer appreciation of the beauty and grandeur of forest 
 scenery, or of the b(^neficent influence upon mind and heart 
 and body of an occasional sojourn in the silent woods. It 
 is a rare pleasure to listen to his graphic descriptions of what 
 he has seen and felt and enjoyed during his rambles in the 
 Adirondacks. Unlike most of the visitors to that pictur- 
 esque region, he was most charmed by his winter excur- 
 sions, when the solitude of the woods was doubly solitary, 
 and when the mid-winter camp-fire gave an aspect to all its 
 surroundings as weird-like as it was fascinating. "You 
 ought to go to the woods in mid-winter," he said to me ox. 
 one occasion. "You will never have seen them in their 
 sublimest grandeur and magnificence until you do." The 
 very last conversation I had with him was on the always 
 inter jsting subject to the angler of fish food, and the reasons 
 why some streams are so much more prolific than others. 
 Tlis theory is the existence of a weed which attracts to itself 
 ani holds, if it does not produce, a species of insect or ani- 
 malculae of which fish, especially trout, are fond, and upon 
 which they thrive. This weed can, he believes, be trans- 
 planted and should be introduced into all waters where 
 trout ar3 found. A treatise from his pen on this subject 
 would be an important and valuable addition to the multi- 
 tude of papers on practical thames which he has written. As 
 one of our honored fish commissioners, such a treatise would 
 come within his official province, and form an important 
 addition to our piscatorial literature. Who will say 
 what influence this love of the silent woods and the 
 peaceful repose of rural life has had in moulding and de- 
 veloping the social virtues and pure public character of this 
 unique and distinguished statesman? None of our public 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 45 
 
 men have lived more circumspectly. His declining sun 
 reflects a mellow light and will set in unclouded lustre. 
 
 Chief Justice Ritchie of New Brunswick, and Chief Jus- 
 tice Gray of Massachusetts (now of the Supreme Court of 
 the United States), were two of the merriest men I ever met 
 on angling waters. The former, though venerable in years, 
 had all the ardor and enthusiasm of lusty youth, and was one 
 of the most persistent anglers I ever encountered. He cast 
 with the skill of an expert and fought his fish with a dash 
 and impetuosity as exciting as it was masterful. Chief 
 Justice Gray, with less experience and more deliberation in 
 casting and killing, was like his brother chief in his intense 
 love of the sport and in appreciation of the enjoyable pos- 
 ibilities of camp life on salmon waters. Among the pictur- 
 esque memories of thase two eminent jurists which remain 
 with me is this : Chief Justice Ritchie had struck a large 
 fish about the going down of the sun. Failing to return to 
 camp before dark, his brother chief became alarmed lest 
 some mishap had befallen him. Whereupon he hastily ex- 
 temporized a number of birch-bark torches, and started out 
 to the rescue. The lost chief was found enveloped in dark- 
 ness, sturdily fighting a huge fish among rocks and rapids as 
 impetuously and as resolutely as if the chances were not ten 
 to one that at any moment his canoe would be wracked 
 upon some one of the hundred boulders which made the 
 rapids directly below the pool in which he had hooked his 
 fish a boiling cauldron. As Chief Gray approached him 
 with his flaming flambeaux, the happy angler, in a voice 
 which overtopped the thundering of the rushing rapids, in 
 reply to the query, "What can we do for you?" exclaim ad: 
 
 "Give me but light, Ajax asks no more," 
 and, amid Ihe ringing cheers of his admiring rescuers, after 
 a further half hour's struggle, a thirty-pound salmon was 
 gaffed, and these two jolly jurists, assisted by their equally 
 excited guides, proceeded to camp — Judge Gray leading as 
 corps commander of the most unique torchlight procession 
 that ever gave escort to a conquering hero on land or water. 
 
 The unusual length of this rambling ''Talk" prevents me 
 
46 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 from referring to several noted churchmen and scholars 
 with whom I have either camped or met in my forest tramps. 
 Prominently in my mind as I write is an eminent and be- 
 loved Bishop, whose fondness for the pastime often leads 
 him to the silent woods and crystal trout streams within 
 easy reach of his cathedral parish. His appreciation of the 
 dignity as well as of the churchly and fascinating character 
 of the art may be inferred from the fact that he deems it no 
 disparagement to his sacred office to be seen bearing with 
 him homeward his well-filled creel and the tidy fly- rod which 
 had been his only companion through the long summer's 
 day. If any cavil at this apostolic habit of the reverend 
 bishop, I would say to them as good old Izaak said to simi- 
 lar stupid critics of his own day: 'Indeed, my friend, you 
 will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has 
 a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending 
 upon it." 
 
ABOUT SALMON FISHING. 
 
 All things by experience 
 Are most improved; then sedulously think 
 To 'meliorate thy stock; no way or rule 
 Be unassay'd. —John Phillips. 
 
 r AM often questioned in regard to the mode of procuring 
 -*- permits to fish in salmon rivers. This question was easily 
 answered until a recent decision was rendered by the Do- 
 minion Courts, affirming the riparian rights of the owners of 
 lands along the rivers. Up to that time the control of all 
 salmon waters, as well above as below the flow of the tide, 
 was in the Dominion government; and the right to fish with 
 either seine or rod could only be obtained from the fishery 
 officials. But now it is different. Permits or leases can 
 only be obtained from the owners of the lands, whether such 
 ownership is in individuals or in the government. Imme- 
 diately this decision was rendered, gentlemen who were 
 promptly posted either took up the unentered government 
 lands commanding desirable pools, or secured leases from 
 It is generally believed that this decision will lead to the 
 early depletion of the now prolific rivers affected by it. The 
 individual owners, even where they lease their pools, will not 
 be as likely to refrain from fishing them with either rod, 
 spear or net as when they were restrained by non-ownership or 
 through fear of the penalties of the old comprehensive and 
 rigorously enforced laws. The government will, of course, 
 withdraw its guardianship from rivers from which it derives 
 no revenue. To be sure, the individual owners or lessees 
 can appoint guardians, but it is very questionable whether 
 such appointees will be as careful or as efficient as those 
 who held an official commission. The loyal residents on and 
 
48 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 
 
 in the vicinity of the rivers have a profound respect for the 
 authority of the Queen, even when that authority is repre- 
 sented by one of their own neighbors, but they have no 
 more respect for individual rights, when those rights are 
 simply guarded by those having no official authority, than 
 our own free and independent citizens. 
 
 But I may be mistaken in regard to the effect of this 
 change in the fishery laws of the Dominion. T certainly 
 hope so; for it would be a great misfortune, not to the Prov- 
 inces alone, nor yet simply to those who take delight in the 
 princely sport of angling, but to all consumers of this kingly 
 fish. For some reason yet unexplained, the salmcn catch 
 has largely diminished within the past few years. It would 
 be a public calamity if this new policy should result in the 
 indiscriminate slaughter of the whole salmon family while 
 on their journey to and from their spawning beds at the 
 sources of the rivers to which they resort to breed and mul- 
 tiply. I most sincerely hope that those who believe no harm 
 will result from this change of policy are right. But I think 
 otherwise, and believe my fears will be confirmed by a few 
 years' experience. 
 
 This decision, it is proper to say, only affects the waters 
 of Quebec and New Brunswick. Nova Scotia rivers, as I 
 understand it, still remain open to all comers. 
 
 *'Well," snid one of my inquisitive friends, who has made 
 up his mind to kill a salmon at any cost, ''assume that, by 
 hook or by crook, I have obtained a permit, what shall I 
 do with it; or, rather, what must I do to render it available?" 
 
 "That is a question more easily answered than how to ob- 
 tain a permit. The first thing needful is an appropriate 
 equipment, such as rod, reel, flies and leaders. In regard to 
 a rod, the essential things are strength and elasticity. 
 Either can easily be obtained separately, but wood in which 
 both are perfectly combined is hard to get hold of. But 
 without both neither is of any use, cither in casting or in 
 killing. A lod that is unresporsive is not only a very un- 
 pleasant thing to handle, but will fail to do the work re- 
 quired even in the hands of an expert. No one can cast 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 49 
 
 a fly with a hoop pole, but one might almost as well have a 
 hoop pole as some rods that are palmed off as appropriate 
 for salmon easting. Unless the spring is equally distributed 
 from tip to butt, and can be distinctly felt at the latter as well as 
 clearly seen at the former, it is not a rod for the work for 
 which it is intended. But with such a rod casting is an ab- 
 solute pleasure, whether the responses are few or many. 
 One may manage very well with an inferior line, if it only 
 has strength, with sec )nd or third rate strong leaders, and 
 with fli'js which would not pass muster in the eye of an 
 artist, but he had better stay at home than to go to salmon 
 waters Tjith anything less than a number one rod, whether 
 of wood or bamboo. My own favorite rod is of wood, but 
 it is fair to say that it is the only one of half a dozen that 
 can be branded as perfect. But this one is perfect. It has 
 the very spirit of elasticity in every fiber, and responds to 
 every movement as if instinct with life. Such a rod is 
 better than rubies, and is worth more than its weight in 
 gold. I would lather break every other rod I own than 
 raise so much as a splinter upon the surface c^ this grand 
 old hero of a hundred battles. Nevertheless, T have made 
 slightly longer casts with a bamboo, but I never give a large 
 fish its butt without a tremor. Its advantage is lightness of 
 weight— no mean advantage, be it understood, when one's 
 muscle is of delicate fiber. 
 
 "In fishing for salmon, I like a line of good weight— not 
 alone for strength, but for casting. A heavy eighteen-foot 
 rod needs something at the end of it you can feel. The 
 most accomplished expert would make poor work with a 
 light trout line on a double-handed salmon rod. An oiled 
 line of medium strand, a hundred or a hundred and twenty- 
 five yards in length, is what one needs. With such a rod 
 and line and with such leaders and flies— both in sufficient 
 numbers— as can be procured of any honest dealer, and a 
 reel made for use and not for ornament, one may feel sure 
 that good sport will not be marred by bad tackling." 
 
 ''Thank you, so far; but after I have secured my tackling, 
 what am I to do with it?" 
 
50 WIJSTEB TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 **My only reply to such a question is— use it." 
 * -That's all very well; but how? Have you no specific 
 advice to give a willing pupil on that head?" 
 
 * 'No ; because while you may be taught by a cook-book 
 how to dress a salad or stew a rabbit, I never knew an 
 angler made by a written recip3. It is no more true that 
 *the proof of the puJding is in the citing' th m that the only 
 way to learn how to ang!e is to angle. One may be talked 
 to until his head swims about fly-casting and salmon fishing 
 and still make his first cast as awkwardly as if he had never 
 seen a fly or stretched a leader. But those who have had 
 any experience in casting for trout will have no difficulty in 
 casting for salmon. The movements in both are practically 
 the same. The only vital difference is in the weight of the 
 rods, and this difl'erence is practically neutralized by the 
 fact that both hands instead of one are employed in the 
 manipuJ ation of the rod used in casting for salmon. Dur- 
 ing all my thirty years of exclusively trout or bass fishing I 
 had never used a double-handed rod. When I first launched 
 my canoe on a salmon river I had to float through a mile of 
 water swarming with trout before I reached a pool where I 
 could have an opportunity to cast for salmon. In making this 
 distance I kept my eight-ounce trout rod in active motion, 
 with such results as gave me a surfeit. When this stretch 
 of water was passed, and my Indian gaffer said, * Trout no 
 more, salmon pool, trout rod no good,' I promptly, but 
 very tremulously, took hold of my salmon rod, which looked 
 ponderous as a weaver's beam and felt as heavy as a hem- 
 lock sapling, and prepared to reach out for the point indi- 
 cated by my Indian mentor. Holding my rod in my left 
 hand, with the butt pressed against my body, I pulled the 
 line from the reel with my right hand, keeping it out by the 
 required quick backward and forward movement until the 
 desired length was obtained, whenl seized the rod with both 
 hands and found myself casting as easily and as steadily as 
 if I had been *to the manner born.' Although kind friends 
 had given me a score of lessons, the memory of them had ail 
 vanished when the crucial moment came, but by simply 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 51 
 
 doing, with a slight variation, what I had always done when 
 casting for trout, I did just the right thing, in the right 
 way, at the right moment. And when the rise came and I 
 struck my fish, I did precisely what I would have done 
 with a large trout or bass in similar waters. I held him 
 taut when I could, gave him line when the pressure de- 
 manded it, re:led in when I could do so with safety, 
 humored him when he sulked, brought him to within reach 
 of the gaff as soon as possible, and landed him with a shout, 
 probably the happiest man in all the Provinces. T have 
 killed hundreds of salmon since, but I do not think I have 
 ever cast better, manipulated my fish more discreetly, or re- 
 ceived more deserved compliments from my critical gaffers, 
 or heartier congratulations from my angling companions. 
 No, a reasonably skillful trout fisher need have no fears 
 about striking out boldly for salmon. It is only necessary 
 for him to make careful use of what he already knows, and 
 to take care that he does not 'lose his head' under the ex- 
 citement of such sport as, in his wildest imaginings, he had 
 never dreamed of." 
 
 "But," said a novice friend who is ambitious to graduate 
 from a hand trawl to a fly rod, *'what hope can I have to 
 successfully tackle a salmon? Surely there are some rules a 
 knowledge of which would assist such unfortunates as my- 
 self?" 
 
 "The only rule I can lay down for you and those like you 
 who have the good sense to aspire to the dignity of salmon 
 anglers is this: Begin as soon as you can and learn from ex- 
 perience. There is no other competent teacher. If you had 
 an ambition to copy a Raphael, you might read every treatise 
 that has ever been written on tone and tint, light and shade, 
 the different varieties of color and the most effective mode 
 of applying them, without being any the better qualified to 
 make the copy than if you had never seen a Raphael. So it 
 is with angling for salmon. No amount of reading or of 
 mere verbal instruction, however clearly or graphically im- 
 parted, can give to you the rhythmic movement, the delicate 
 twist, the careful manipulation, and the nice discrimination 
 
5.3 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 required to make a wise nse of the constantly varying con- 
 ditions in wtiich an angler finds himself when casting for 
 salmon. Topsy wasn't brought up — she 'growed ;' and that 
 is the only way to become an expert on salmon waters. 
 
 "I never knew two anglers who cast exactly alike, while I 
 have seen scores who were the peers of each other. Each 
 has his peculiar attitude, motion and swing; his straight, 
 lateral or sweeping cast, but each reaches his goal with 
 equal precision, if not with equal grace. Each manipulates 
 his fly on the water, awaits a rise, and strikes and nghts his 
 fish after his own fashion," but certain general principles are 
 adhered to by all, and ail have the same measure of felicity 
 from the beginning to the end of the fray. But whatever 
 their manner of casting and striking; and killing, the testi- 
 mony of each will be, that whatever of skill they have was 
 acquired, not from instructions in the theory of the art, but 
 in the knowledge that came to them from actual experience; 
 from all of which I do not wish to be understood as con- 
 demning the honest efforts of honest anglers to transform 
 a novice into an expert by written or verbal instructions — 
 I have done a little of both myself —but simply to impress 
 the earnest aspirant with the fact that the only way to 
 learn to cast is to cast, and the only way to appreciate the 
 pleasure available to salmon anglers is to experiencs it. As 
 no man ever yet became acquainted with the luscious flavor 
 of the creamy flakes of a well-cooked salmon by having some 
 one glowingly describe how deliciously the delectable mor- 
 sels rested upon his own gratified palate, so no man ever yet 
 learned how to cast for salmon, or attained unto a full apprecia- 
 tion of the supreme delight wrapped up in the exercise and 
 in the results which come from it, by being told how to do 
 the one, or by having described to him the ecstacy of the 
 other." 
 
SALMON AND SEA TROUT HAUNTS AND HABITS. 
 
 In those vernal seaso/JS of the year, when the air is calm and pleas- 
 ant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and 
 see her riches, and partake of her rejoicing with Heaven and earth, — 
 Milton. 
 
 Salmon are a dainty fish and never resort to streams 
 which, in their normal condition, are turpid or impure. 
 Like trout, they must have clear, cold water, where there 
 are rocks and rill's and pebbly bottoms, and pools scooped 
 out of the river bed and flanked by rapidly flowing currents. 
 I never took a salmon in absolutely still water, and very 
 seldom on shallow rapids. The former is not natural to 
 them, and when in the latter they are pursuing their upward 
 journey and are not easily diverted. They rest in pools, and 
 there is where the angler looks for them and expects to find 
 them, and when found and they are in the rising mood, no 
 sport has ever yet been revealed to human consciousness 
 which is more kingly. 
 
 The best trout streams are simply miniature salmon rivers. 
 But trout are unlike salmon in their habits in this : In the 
 eaily season trout are often found on riffs where the water 
 is both shallow and rapid, but later on, from the middle of 
 July to the close of August, no experienced angler would 
 expect to find them +here in any inviting numbers. In these 
 hot months, when the water has become tepid, they resort to 
 
54 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 the mouths of cold brooks- or spring holes, and they need not 
 be looked for elsewhere. But salmon are unifoimly found, 
 in August as well as in June, in pools. To be sure, when 
 the water is well up, there are pools where there are only 
 shallow riffs when the water is low. I have often taken fish 
 at high water where I would, not think of casting for them 
 when the water was low. Hence one never comes to know 
 a river so as to make the most of it until he has fished it at 
 all its stages. But whether the water is high or low it is all 
 the same ; salmon rest in pools, and it is the merest chance 
 if any are taken elsewhere. In these pools the water is not 
 always to say deep, but it is always of greater depth than 
 the water in their immediate neighborhood, and the full 
 force of the current is ordinarily dellected from them by the 
 rocks of larger or smaller dimensions, whdse position has 
 given the motion to the water which, in time, has scooped 
 out these resting places for the kingly fish. 
 
 On all the rivers I have fished for salmon — and I assume 
 it be true of all others — the best pools are almost always 
 found just above some rough or heavy rapid. The fatigue 
 involved in ascending these rapids make rest all the more 
 welcome. The excitement in fishing these pools is intensi- 
 fied by the doubt which always follows a strike whether you 
 will be able to kill your fish within the limits of I he pool or 
 • ^^hether he will rush down the rapids, and so compel you 
 .0 follow him. In that case the chances are always against 
 you, because, with all the skill of your canoemen, if you 
 are in a canoe, or of yourself if you are on shore and the 
 water renders wading possible, it is always questionable 
 whether you can keep up with your flying fish. Besides, in 
 rushing through a rapid full of rocks, there is always the 
 chance that your line will get hitched, or, worst of all, that 
 the fish may take it into his head to stop midway of the 
 rapid, and thus, like a hunted deer, double on you and allow 
 you to swoop past him, only to find out the fact when you 
 have dropped into still water *a hundred yards or more be- 
 low the point where your fish is sulking. Under these latter 
 conditions a hitched line is often the sequel; or, when it is 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 55 
 
 not, you can only force back your canoe against the impetu- 
 ous current to where your fish is sulking by the most her- 
 culean efforts. When that point is reached and you find 
 your line happily free, you can only hope that he will 
 start; and when he does start under such circumstances it is 
 almost invariably down stream, with a rush, and you after 
 him under such a pressure of excitement as renders you 
 equally indifferent to danger and unconscious of fatigue. 
 When the foot of the rapids is reached the fight is renewed, 
 but you are master of the situation if you have shown ordi- 
 nary skill thus far, and it is only a question of time — if you 
 are well hooked — when the gaff will be called into requisi- 
 tion. 
 
 When you are casting from the shore and you are obliged 
 to follow your fish on foot through even shallow rapids, 
 you need to have all your wits about you, and to bring out 
 all the highest skill there is in you; first, to preserve your 
 footing upon the slippery rocks over which you must pass, 
 and secondly, to take care that your fish does not i*un faster 
 than you do yourself, and so get out more of your line than 
 you wish him to have. In this sort of fishing you have one 
 advantage over the canoe, you need not move faster than 
 your fish, and if he chooses to take a rest midway of the 
 rapid, so can you. But it is an unpleasant time for a fish to 
 sulk when you are waist-deep in the water awaiting his 
 pleasure. I have more than once stood thus an half hour at 
 a time, finding it impossible, by any skill at my command, 
 to start the stubborn brute. Once I was dragged to the foot 
 of a rapid which terminated in a deep hole, through which 
 there was no way of passing but by a plunge and a swim. 
 Of course, no one in such a contest would give up beat 
 when a cold bath gave promise of victory. The provoca- 
 tion in this particular case was that immediately after the 
 gamy fellow had compelled me to take this plunge he sur- 
 rendered—coming up to the gaff so soon as I could reach a 
 footing and give him the butt. 
 
 But these rapids tussles are glorious when the fish makes 
 a straight wake for the easily flowing water below them. It 
 
56 WmTEB TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 is grand to stand up in your canoe when both fish and canoe 
 move at equal lightning pace, and you are able to keep a taut 
 line upon him every inch of the way. I have often had just 
 such experiences, and the recollection of them still stirs the 
 blood like the sound of a trumpet. 
 
 Sea trout show themselves wherever salmon are found, but 
 not always simultaneously with them. In rivers where the 
 salmon run begins in May or early June, you need not look for 
 sea trout in any considerable numbers before well on into July. 
 Intermediately they are found in tidewater at the mouths of 
 the salmon rivers, and often in such numbers and of such 
 weight as give the angler superb sport. Three, five and 
 seven pound fish are not uncommon, and I have heard of 
 them of even greater weight, but I have never myself taken 
 one of over five pounds — two poun ds less than a real brook 
 trout, I once killed in the Rangeley waters, a beautiful fac 
 simile of which was kindly painted for me by Dr. Otis, of 
 New York, who was in camp with me at the time. There 
 is no picture in my collection I value more highly. 
 
 Next to salmon fishing I know of no more exciting sport 
 than angling for sea trout in waters where they reach their 
 highest dimensions; for waters differ in regard to this fish 
 as in regard to both brook trout and salmon — the weight of 
 all fish being determined by the abundance and quality of 
 the feed available to them. There are salmon rivers open to 
 all comers for sea trout alone, after the salmon season is 
 over, say from the middle of September on. I can imagine 
 few things more fascinating than such an excursion. I 
 know a river that you can strike fifty miles above its mouth, 
 by an easy portage of six miles from the st eamboat landing. 
 To float down these fifty miles with the current, in a bark 
 canoe, with such scenery on either hand as can hardly be 
 excelled on the continent, is something which any appreci- 
 ative angler might covet. It is a trip I have never yet 
 found leisure to take, but affairs will go hard with me if I do 
 not try it the coming season. 
 
 Like trout, salmon vary in size in different rivers. Why 
 this is so is a mystery which I have not been able to solve. 
 
WINTER TALKS ON BUMMER PASTIMES. 67 
 
 It cannot result from either the quantity or quality of food 
 in the rivers, because it is assumed to he a settled fact that 
 salmon are very light feeders— if they feed at all — in fresh 
 water. Possibly the diiference comes from the greater or 
 less abundance of food found by the fish in their salt water 
 rambles. Far-fetched as this conjecture may be deemed to 
 be by those who are as i2:noraDt of the subject as I am my- 
 self, it ma3^ perhaps, after all, furnish the true solution; 
 because, as the instincts of the fish always bring them back 
 to the rivers where they were hatched, may not the same in- 
 stinct keep them to their own feeding ranges when outside? 
 If so, and if these ranges, like trout waters, vary in the kind 
 and quality of food available, the fact will affect their 
 weight. I simply state this as a hypothesis. If I am at 
 fault, and if any one can solve the problem "by authority" 
 or otherwise, I will be very glad to hear from him. 
 Certain it is that those who have heard much about salmon 
 rivers from those acquainted with them, have heard such 
 phrases as these: "Ye?, there are plenty of salmon in such a 
 river, but they are small." In such another river we are 
 told: * 'The fish are in moderate numbers and of fair size," 
 and of others we are told: "The fish may not be as plenty 
 as in some rivers, but they run large," and so on of rivers 
 from one end of the coast to the other. In one where 1 have 
 fished, a 35 pound salmon was not uncommon. The largest 
 fish I ever landed weighed 39i pounds, but I fought a fish 
 for two hours which finally broke away and was taken next 
 morning in a net nine miles below with my fly in his mouth, 
 and he weighed 42 pounds. One gentleman, Mr. Spurr, of 
 St. John, N. B., kdled two 40 pound fish in the same river 
 the preceding year. It was in this river, also, that General 
 Arthur killed his famous 50 pound salmon, and where Mr. 
 Dun, his companion, lost a fish after a long struggle, which 
 immediately afterward floated into a net with the evidence 
 of Mr. Dun's ownership in his mouth. This fish weighed 52 
 pounds. 
 
 These monsters were caught in the Cascapedia, a river in 
 which forty fl^h that I took one season averaged 25^ lbs.. 
 
58 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 and five of these only weighed 11, 15, 17, 19 and 21 lbs. 
 respectively. The Restigouche is almost equally famous 
 for its large fish, and the Metapedia and Merimichi used to 
 be. In the rivers I have more recently fished the average 
 of a season's catch will not exceed 18 lbs. , and the largest I 
 ever caught in my present river weighed only a fraction 
 over 29 lbs. 
 
 But I trust no reader will imbibe the idea from what I 
 have written that the sport of salmon angling depends upon 
 the size of the fish. As a rule there is more lightning in a 
 12 lb. than in a 35 lb. salmon, and I have had more trouble 
 killing fish of the lesser than of the heavier weight. They 
 don't fight so long, but they are vastly more lively while 
 they are fighting. The only fish 1 ever found it impossible 
 to prevent running under my canoe so as to do me damage 
 weighed but 11 lbs. The movement smashed my rod into 
 several pieces, and I only landed him after the exercise of 
 such skill and patience as excited the wonder and admira- 
 tion of my delighted gaffer, and astonished myself. 
 
 1 cannot call to mind the record of any salmon taken 
 with a fly on this side the water larger than that killed by 
 Gen. Arthur. But larger fish are recorded as having been 
 killed with the rod in English and Scotch waters. One was 
 taken last summer in the Tweed that weighed 60 lbs. An 
 English earl is credited with one that weighed 69f lbs. A 
 Highlander, after an all-night fight, is said to have landed a 
 73-lb. fish, and Hofland says a sal Dion was sold in the Lon- 
 don market which weighed 83 lbs. When this was, or 
 how taken, is not stated. I know Christopher North once 
 declared he had killed a fish weighing "90 lbs. neat." But 
 1 make no account of that fish, because it was only caught 
 with "a long bow," to serve as a climax to the Ettrick 
 Shepherd's extravagant "fish stories," as given in Macken- 
 zie's edition of the "Noctes Ambrosianse," vol. 4, p. 83, 84: 
 
 Shepherd.— What creel-fu's [of trout] you maun hae killed! 
 
 North.— A hundred and thirty in one day in Loch Awe, James, as 
 I hope to be saved— not one of them under— 
 
 Shepherd.— A dizzen pun'— and twa-thirds of them abune't. 
 Athegither a ton. 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 59 
 
 North. — * * * And poor Stevenson, mild and brave— now no more 
 —with his own hands wreathed round my forehead a diadem of 
 hetherbells and called me King of the Anglers. 
 
 Shepherd.— Pool That was nae day's jQshin' ava, man, in com- 
 parison to ane o' mine on St. Mary's Loch. To say naething aboot 
 the count less sma' anes, tv/a hundred about a half a pun, ae hundred 
 about a hail pun, fifty about twa pun, five-and-twenty about f owro 
 pun, and the lave rinnin' frae half a stane up to a stane and a half, 
 except about half a dizzen, aboon a' wecht, that put Geordio Gude- 
 f allow and Huntly Gordon to their mettle to carry them pechin' to 
 Mount Benger on a ban' barrow. 
 
 North. — Well done, Uljsses'. 
 
 Shepherd.— Anither day in the Megget I caucht a cart-fu'. As it 
 gaed doon the road the kintry-f oik thocht it was a cart-fu' o' herrins 
 —for they were a' preceesely ae size to an unce — and though we left 
 twa dizzen at this hoose— and fowre dizzen at that hoose — and a 
 gross at Henderland— on coontin' them at hamein the kitchin, Leezy 
 made them oot forty dizzen, and Girzzy forty-twa, aught; sae a dis- 
 pute haen arisen, and of course abet, we took the census ouei again, 
 and may these be the last words I sail ever speak, gin they didna 
 turn oot to be Fourty-Five! 
 
 And here is where Christopher's ninety pound salmon 
 comes in : 
 
 North. — The heaviest fish I ever killed was in the river Awe— ninety 
 pound neat— I hooked him on a Saturday afternoon and I had small 
 hopes of killing him, as I never break the Sabbath. But I am con- 
 vinced that within the hour he cama to know that ho was in the 
 hands of Christopher North, and his courage died. I gave him the 
 butt so cruelly that in two hours he began to wallop, and at the end 
 of three he lay dead at my feet, just as 
 
 "The star of Jove, so beautiful and large," 
 tipped the crest of Cruachan. 
 
 Shepherd.— Hoo lang? 
 
 NoRTH.-So beautifully proportioned, that like that of St. Peter's or 
 St. Paul's you did not feel his mighty magnitude till after long con- 
 templation. Then you indeed knew that he was a sublime fish, and 
 could not but smile at the idea of any other salmon. 
 
 Tickler.— Mr. De Quincey, now that these two old fools have got 
 upon angling — 
 
 Shepherd.— Twa auld fulesl You great, starin', Saracen-headed 
 lang-slianks ! If it \^ erna for bringin' Mr. North intill trouble, by haen 
 a dead man fund within his premeeses, deal tak me gin I wudna frac- 
 tur' your skull wi' ane o' the cut crystals. 
 
 After reading this dialogue, no one will doubt that Chris- 
 topher North's ninety pound salmon was killed with * 'a long 
 bow" instead of a Jock Scott. 
 
SEVERAL RELEVAIsT TOPICS. 
 
 Forced from their homes, a melancholy tram.— Goldsmith. 
 
 I find the following paragraph in a fairly-written book, 
 printed in England fifteen years ago, with this title, 
 "Chiploquorgan ; or, Life by the Camp Fire in Dominion of 
 Canada and Newfoundland, by Richard Lewis Dashwood, 
 XV. Regiment." 
 
 "We were much surprised and disappointed at the paucity 
 of salmon on our way up the Cascapedia, and when we 
 reached the Forks only succeeded in killing two after 
 several day's fishing. We therefore came to the conclusion 
 that the river as regards salmon was a myth, and decided 
 to return to the sea. " 
 
 This visit was made in July, 1862. "The Forks," where 
 barely two salmon were killed, are about fifty miles from the 
 mouth of the river, and "on his way up," Col. Dashwood 
 and his companions passed a score of pools where I have 
 killed many scores of salmon, and which no one now-a-days 
 with any sort of skill could fish without being amply re- 
 warded for the time and toil required to reach them. 
 
 The "paucity" experienced by this party in 1862 can not 
 be attributed either to their want of proficiency or to their 
 ignorance of the habits of the fish, for the Colonel was an 
 old salmon angler, having fished all the best salmon waters 
 of the "old country," and was accompanied by a gentleman 
 as noted for his skill as for his eccentricities. Nor could 
 their ill luck have resulted from their want of knowledge of 
 the locality of the pools, for some of them are so conspicu- 
 ous that any "wayfaring man, though a fool," could not 
 have made a mistake. 
 
 To what then could this "paucity of salmon" in this long 
 famousriver be attributed? Making all due allowance for 
 any want of skill or knowledge or application on the part of 
 these gentlemen, I am inclined to attribute their disappoint- 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 61 
 
 ment to the fact that the salmon were not then in the river 
 in any such numbers as they have been since, and for this 
 reason : 
 
 Twenty years ago that river and all others were open to 
 all comers, whether with net, rod or spear, and because of 
 this fact it had not only been thinned out, but by the mer- 
 ciless way in which the fish were hunted in season and out 
 of season — in the estuary, in the pools and on the spawning 
 beds — they were given no opportunity to multiply. By this 
 persistent slaughter, continued for years in all riveis acces- 
 sible to the salmon purchaser and packer, the kingly fish in 
 the lower Provinces would very soon have shared the fate of 
 their predecessors in the Upper Canada waters and in our 
 own rivers on the south shore of Lake Ontario and the St. 
 Lawrence. For it is not simply from far-back tradition that 
 we know that salmon were once abundant in tliese Lake 
 Ontario tributaries. I have myself (when a lad) seen canoe 
 loads of salmon brought into "Little York," now Toronto, 
 by the Indians, who had captured them in the rivers "Hum- 
 ber" and ''Credit" at the head of the lake. 
 
 A venerable gentleman of Keesville (Mr. Arnold, now de- 
 ceased) once told me that in 1818, he had purchased a salmon 
 freshly caught at Oswego for a " York shilling," and that 
 for several years afterward they continued to be taken in 
 great numbers in that neighborhood. And you may remem- 
 ber that Mr. Weed was moved by the recollections awakened 
 by the account I gave of "my first salmon," to publish in 
 the Tribune some years ago, the account of his capture of a 
 salmon in Onondaga Creek, near the present site of the 
 city of Syracuse. He then lived in that neighbor- 
 hood. One night he observed the flashing of bright lights 
 along the creek, and on going out to see what was up, he 
 found a party of Indians with spears and clubs, killing sal- 
 mon as they were trying to force their way over the shal- 
 lows of that stream. It was then and there, borrowing a 
 spear from a friendly Indian, he killed Ms first salmon. To 
 us of to-day this fact s(^ems incredible. Nevertheless, that 
 incident was but one of a thousand like it occurring in the 
 
62 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 shallows and pools of all the streams which then made their 
 way, unobstructed by milldams or other barriers, to the lake. 
 
 But for these obstructions, supplemented by choking saw- 
 dust and poisonous chemicals, many of these streams would 
 have continued to be what they once were, the chosen resorts 
 and spawning beds of this favorite fish, whereas now, 
 not a salmon, except at one or two points, where they have 
 been or are being artificially propagated, is seen in any river 
 between Montreal and Hamilton. I would not complain of 
 this if it had been a square question between progressive in- 
 dustry and the extermination of the lordly salmon ; but we 
 now know that, in many rivers, their extermination was not 
 neccessary to the development of industry. If the mill- 
 dams had been constructed so that the fish could have sur- 
 mounted them (as is easily practicable), salmon would have 
 coutinued to ascend the streams, and would still be found 
 in waters from whence they have been driven by the erec- 
 tion of these impassable barriers. Although the Dominion 
 government is endeavoring to undo the mischief already 
 done, I fear it will take many more years to replenish than 
 it did to deplete these once prolific salmon waters. 
 
 A year or two before this developed * 'paucity" of the 
 Cascapcdia and other rivers of the lower Provinces, having 
 learned by experience that it would be too late to lock the 
 stable door after the horse was stolen, stringent laws were 
 passed by Parliament to protect the fisheries in all waters 
 under government control. But, unfortunately, while the 
 original laws contained sundry useful provisions, they were 
 fatally defective in that all persons were ^'forbidden to fish 
 for, capture or kill fish by means of spears, except only 
 the Indians." This exception rendered the law practically 
 nugatory. The deadly spear had been the chief cause of all 
 the mischief, and so long as this permission continued it 
 would be impossible to bring the rivers (in the neighbor- 
 hood of localities where the speared fish could be exchanged 
 for rum and tobacco) back to their original status. This 
 spearing clause was still in force in '62, when Col. Dash- 
 wood made his trip up the Cascapedia, and to that fact may 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES 63 
 
 be attributed the then ''paucity" of the river an he found it 
 Soon afterward, spearing even by Indians was strictly pro- 
 hibited, and as a result the river became in a few years the 
 most noted on the continent : and it will so continue, unless 
 the recent riparian rights decision shall work as mischiev- 
 ously as many believe it will. 
 
 I made my first visit to the Cascapedia in *74. At that 
 time the stringent fishery laws — including the prohibition 
 against spearing by Indians as well as by all others — had 
 been in force for eight or ten years, and, however it may 
 have been before, it certainly was not then true that "the 
 river as regards salmon was a myth." Its waters were 
 teeming with the lordly fish, and their capture afforded all 
 the excitement and sport any reasonable angler could desire. 
 Whether at the "Sheddon Pool," ten miles, or at "the 
 Forks," fifty miles abo\e the mouth of the river, fish were 
 found in satisfactory numbers. But I had other proof than 
 that furnished by Col. Dashwood that it had not always 
 been so. Mr. Best, an intelligent habitant, who occupies the 
 last house on the river (ten miles from the bay), and who 
 has lived on the river for thirty years, told me that the fish 
 were never so abundant as they then were ; that they were 
 far more numerous than ten years previously, and were in- 
 creasing in numbers every year. In asking him how he 
 accounted for the increase, his response was, "A strict 
 guardianship and no more spearing by anybody." 
 
 But something more is necessary to keep up the supply, 
 even though the recent riparian decision shall not work the 
 mischief apprehended. The nets at the mouths of the 
 rivers should be raised for two or three instead of one day 
 in the week, to enable a larger number of fish to reach their 
 spawning beds. Now that every pool on every available 
 river is persistently fished, a much larger percentage of im- 
 migration is necessary to keep up the supply. If this is not 
 secured, even with the otherwise effective protective laws, 
 there will be inevitably a rapid diminution of salmon avail- 
 able to either seine or fly. 
 
 But the sea-trout will remain, whatever may become of 
 
64 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 the salmon ; and they are next of kin to that noble fish in 
 habit, weight, flavor, and every gamy quality. 
 
 Until within a very few years not many anglers on our 
 side of the line were in the habit of "going for" salmon. 
 Even so recently as ten years ago a * 'Yankee" was seldom 
 seen on the best rivers. But they have of late multiplied 
 twenty-fold, and if they do not now they soon will consti- 
 tute a majority of the ''simple wise men," to whom the gentle 
 art has become irresistibly fascinating; and the fact is not 
 altogether agreeable to our English cousins, whatever our 
 Canadian neighbors may think of it. The London Field 
 gives expression to its displeasure thus: 
 
 "The principal rivers are leased by Americans, to whom 
 money is no object. When they take a fancy to a particular* 
 river, there is no mistake about it, they will have it." 
 
 And the Field only speaks the simple truth. The New 
 York Club, of which President Arthur, Mr. Yander- 
 bilt, Robert Dun and a score of other wealthy gentlemen 
 are members, paid a fabulous price for the best portion of 
 the Restigouche, and Mr. Blossom and his associates were 
 almost equally liberal in the price they paid for the lower 
 twelve miles of the Cascapedia. These are, by all odds, the 
 best rivers in the Provinces. Other first-class rivers will be, 
 if they have not already been, similarly secured "by Ameri- 
 cans, to whom money is no object." And the opportunity 
 to do so has been greatly facilitated by the recent riparian 
 decisions. Previously, the government officials had supreme 
 control, and they were not always indifferent to the solicita- 
 tions of their home friends. Leases, like kisses, often went 
 by favor, as more than one American bidder has had occa- 
 sion to know. But individual owners are not likely to forego 
 a good offer from a "Yankee" to accept a poorer one from a 
 "Kanuck." The result will be a more equitable distribution 
 of leases and permits and an increased influx of American 
 anglers. So be it. Men who have money to spend for 
 coveted enjoyments can expend it for nothing more health- 
 ful, harmless and exhilarating than in the delightful pastima 
 of angling for salmon. 
 
THE GAME LAWS— ANGLING MISHAPS— SEA AND 
 BROOK TROUT. 
 
 He who has once experienced the fascination of the woods-life 
 never escapes its enticement. In the memory nothing remains but 
 Its charm.— Warner. 
 
 Our local coterie were in council a few evenings since, 
 nominally to devise means to render such aid as was prac- 
 ticable to secure an amendment and more general enforce- 
 ment of the existing game laws of the State, but really for 
 a promiscuous confab upon the subject of angling in gene- 
 ral. The game laws were conceded to be imperfect, but less 
 so than the slip-shod way in which they were enforced. 
 Every species of fish arid game are ruthlessly pursued out 
 of season and by prohibited devices. This is true not alone 
 in regard to remote waters and ranges, but also in regard to 
 lakes and streams in populous neighborhoods. And this 
 state of things will continue until the general public shall 
 reach a more just conception of the material value of well- 
 stocked waters in all sections of the State. As a partial 
 remedy, an increase of the number of game constables was 
 suggested. The necessity for this is conceded by those in 
 authority, and if, in addition, those who api^reciate the im- 
 portance of game protection shall exert their personal influ- 
 ence to secure a thorough enforcement of the law in their 
 several localities, something effective might be accom- 
 plished. At a few points in the State there are organized 
 associations, one of whose pui poses is to prosecute offend- 
 ers. Some of them have rendered good service, but they 
 are not generally efficient. Their members are ordinarily 
 busy men, who have no leisure to give personal attention to 
 the frequent violations of the law by the poachers and pot- 
 hunters of their neighborhoods. If these several organiza- 
 tions could or would, for a year or two, employ some one to 
 give his entire time to the detection and prosecution of 
 
66 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 offenders, tbey would learn to fear if not to respect the 
 law, and good results would follow. 
 
 Our own State is not an exception to the prevailing 
 van-lalism. Xot only do these violators of the laws of na- 
 ture and of man deem all game their rightful plunder, but 
 they persist in bagging it at all seasons and by any device. 
 This is as true on the vast plains of the great West as within 
 the borders of civilization, and is as persistently practised 
 on the recently stocked salmon waters of Maine as in the 
 over-fished lakes and rivers of the Adirondacks. Public 
 sentiment is being gradually educated up to the proper 
 standard upon this subject and it will ultimately reach a 
 point when it will serve as a moral check upon all classes of 
 the community, but meanwhile nothing but the terrors of 
 the law and the enforcement of its penalty will act as suf- 
 ficient restraints upon its habitual and persistent violators. 
 
 **If all has not been done that is desirable," said one of our 
 number, ''something has certainly been accomplished by the 
 discussion of this subject within the past twenty or thirty 
 years. I remember when sportsmen — not professional 
 poachers or pot-hunters — did not deem it unsportsmanlike 
 to string set-lines in the lakes and rivers of the North Woods 
 to swell their 'count.' This practise has, I believe, been 
 generally discarded, except by the low-down riff- raff, who 
 have no more idea of what is legitimate in the practise of the 
 art than an Esquimau has of the principles of algebra. 
 
 "I once met one of these fellows on the North Branch 
 of the Moose River a great many years ago. We saw him 
 set his line at a point famous for the number and size of the 
 trout, which seemed to make it their headquarters. He sup- 
 posed himself unobserved, of course, and retired to his 
 fehanty sure of a good haul in the morning. I was in camp 
 with Dick O., whom most of you knew as 'a fellow of in- 
 finite humor,' and as muscular as he was witty, and as fond 
 of fair play in angling as he was 'down on' all poachers and 
 pot-hunters. When it was suggested that we make a mid- 
 night raid upon the trap set by our neighbor, Dick dissented, 
 with the remark that 'he would make him a visit early in 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 67 
 
 the moruing, give him due notice of his purpose, and cut 
 his line before his eyes.' I offered to accompany him, but 
 he declined my services and proceeded alone to perform his 
 righteous office. I watched him on his mission, observed 
 him talking to the poacher, and saw him stoop down at the 
 edge of the water, as if to cut the line. A tussle followed, 
 and in less than a minute 'something dropped' in the water, 
 and it wasn't Dick. The issue was the capture of the set- 
 line; and, after due explanations, apologies, and sundry 
 soothing appliances, a treaty of peace was signed, Dick was 
 forgiven, and the poacher promised 'never to do so no 
 more.'" 
 
 "Was that the season I met you fishing under water?'* 
 
 '* *No more o' that, Hal, an' you love me.' " 
 
 **Why not? It was certainly nothing to your discredit, 
 and I have had a many hearty laugh since, at the remem- 
 brance of it. " 
 
 "Tell us about it, D." 
 
 * 'Well, it was something like this: I was wading and 
 casting down the Korth Branch with results entirely satis- 
 factory, when I reached the borders of, a rather deep pool, 
 into which the waters swept with a velocity which rendered 
 it extremely difficult for me to keep my footing. Anxious 
 to reach a shaded spot in the pool, which required a long 
 cast, I lifted myself up upon a slippery boulder to the more 
 certainly reach my objective point. I succeeded, as I ex- 
 pected, in raising a large fish, but in striking, my feet slipped 
 from under me, and I glided into the flood as cleanly and as 
 arrow-like as a saw log dips into the water below the chute. 
 I was not aware that anyone was in the neighborhood, until 
 I heard a roar of laughter as T emerged from my bath to 
 swim ashore. That's the whole story; I saw nothing laugh-' 
 able iu the adventure then, although I have often since 
 smiled in thinking of it." 
 
 "No, gentlemen, that is not the whole story, begging my 
 friend's pardon. After he made his plunge there was noth- 
 ing to be seen of him or of his belongings, but his rod, and 
 that was held as erect and as artistically as if he was playing 
 
68 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 his fish from the rock from which he had slipped. The hne 
 was kept taut, and the tip of the rod bent as gracefully while 
 the angler was submerged as when he regained his footing. 
 It was a fine illustration of the ruling passion, and I was as 
 glad as if 1 had done it myself, when our friend landed a 
 three-pound trout as the result of his judicious manipulation 
 under diflaculties. By the way, D., did you ever find your 
 hat?" 
 
 * 'Yes, half a mile below, and none the worse for the journey, 
 But since you have begun to 'tell tales out of school/ I have 
 a mind to give you a Roland for your Oliver. " 
 
 "Let's have it; let's have it," from all sides. *'Bob will 
 not object." 
 
 **Not I, for 1 am sure nothing can be said about my ang- 
 ling adventures which will not redound to my infinite 
 credit." 
 
 * 'We had been leisurely fioating down the Raquette on 
 such a day as rendered one quite indifi'erent to any past or 
 any coming event except the going down of the sun. It 
 was just such a day as one would like to have last forever. 
 As we floated, we cast hither and thither, from no special 
 desire to get a rise, but simply that our well-balanced rods 
 might share in the inexpressible felicity of those who wielded 
 them. It was well on in the afternoon when we touched 
 the head of the long rapids near the Oxbow — in old times 
 one of the best points for large trout, and plenty of them, 
 on the river. My friend here was the first to get a rise, 
 and was doing his best to land him at the head of the pool. 
 But the fish and the current combined were too strong for 
 him, and while both guide and angler were more Intent 
 upon the fish than upon their surroundings, the boat floated 
 - sideways against a projecting treetop, and was upset in the 
 twinkling of an eye. Tbe water was rather more than 
 shoulder deep ; but before I could cross over to help him, my 
 friend had reached terra firma, while the guide was swim- 
 ming with the current to overtake his boat. It is proper to 
 say that Bob kept his temper, although he lost his rod." 
 
 *1 remember those rapids very well," said another of our 
 
".: WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 69 
 
 number, 'but I have not visited them since the Raquette 
 v^aters were planted with pickerel by a Long Lake vandal, 
 whose name I have forgotten," 
 
 * 'But I haven't. It was Lysander Hall, who had often 
 served as my guide, and an excellent guide he was — quick, 
 intelligent, obliging and better acquainted with all the by- 
 paths of the wilderness than any guide I ever had, except 
 George Morse, who was killed in the war, and over who33 
 remains Gen. Spinner caused to be erected a fitting record 
 of his patriotism and courage." 
 
 "No matter what he was in all else, in thus polluting the 
 Raquette waters. Hall committed a crime for which there 
 was no law to mete out to him fitting punishment. The 
 grandest trout waters in the State are deteriorated for all 
 time. But, as I was saying, I remember those long rapids 
 very pleasantly, and except at Setting Pole, I enjoyed swift 
 water fishing nowhere else so well. Since I last visited 
 them I have done something in the way of killing sea trout, 
 and I seldom cast in the swift waters where they are found 
 without being reminded of the rapids on the Raquette." 
 
 '* Are not the fish even more alike than the waters they 
 inhabit?" 
 
 **At first I thought the fish not only alike in appearance, 
 but alike in fact. But I have since changed my opinion, 
 and now believe them to be quite distinct from our brook or 
 river trout, but of course, of the same general family. " 
 
 "In this," I replied, "you are at odds with some of the 
 best writers. " 
 
 ' 'I know that very well, but I know also that I am in agree- 
 ment with others, and where doctors thus differ I have tried 
 to decide for myself, not by any scientific investigation — 
 although I have done a little of that — but by a close observ- 
 ation of the haunts and habits of the fish. Some of the 
 salmon and sea trout rivers I have fished are fed by numer- 
 ous small tributaries which are full of brook trout, and 
 when coveting a mess, as we often did, I knew just where 
 to 'find them. I have one special brook in my mind which 
 projected its cold, pure transparent water into the river with 
 
70 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 such force as to preserve its identity for some distance. 
 Whenever I cast within the radius of this distinctively 
 marked brook water I would take clearly marked brook 
 trout ranging from a quarter to half a pound, but if I cast 
 beyond this line so much as a half dozen yards I would 
 have no brook trout response. When the clearly defined 
 river water line was reached, the dainty fish seemed to halt 
 as surely as if they had run their heads against a stone wall. 
 But, by extending my cast beyond the outflow of tlie brook, 
 I would receive prompt responses from what I believed to 
 be sea trout. On placing them side by side the difference 
 in their appearance seemed to me to be something more than 
 the difference caused by the difference of the water in the 
 two streams. But both are beautiful fish, but, in such a 
 side by side comparison, the sea trout is discovered to lack 
 the rich lustre and golden beauty of his more dainty 
 cousin." 
 
 **Just," I added, ''as you will find the tiny fry } ou see in 
 the little spring rivulets which empty into a trout lake to be 
 more beautiful in form and color than the larger fish you 
 find in the larger waters." 
 
 "It was long a question," my friend rejoined, ''whether 
 pickerel and muscalonge were not identical. Now we know 
 that they are different fish, and yet they resemble each other 
 quite as closely as sea and brook trout. Among all the 
 trout I have taken in salmon waters I never saw one that 
 bore an exact resemblance to the trout I have taken in real 
 trout brook waters, or that leaped from the water to the fly 
 with the same vim which distinguishes the large brook trout 
 in our own northern lakes and rivers. I have no wish to be 
 dogmatical upon this subject, but I shall hold to my opinion 
 all the. same." 
 
 "I do not care to argue the question with you," was my 
 reply, "but I am not convinced. I agree with you in this, 
 however, that, except salmon, I know of no fish that affords 
 better sport to the appreciative angler than sea trout rang- 
 ing from three to eight pounds in weight. " 
 
ODDS AND ENDS. 
 
 I would do what I pleased, and doing what I pleased, I should have 
 my will; and having my will, I should be contented; and when one 
 is contented there is no more to be desired; and when there is no 
 more to be desired, there is an end of it.— Cervantes. 
 
 At a recent sitting of the local brotherhood, one of them 
 was moved to murmur thus : 
 
 *'My usually placid temper is often disturbed by the 
 stupid criticisms which outside barbarians sometimes pro- 
 nounce upon our gentle pastime. Their ignorance is their 
 only excuse. But men have no business to speak dogmat- 
 ically upon a subject of which they know nothing. And 
 this is just the mental status of those who speak dispar- 
 agingly of angling and of those who engage in it. There 
 is a thousand times more of the divine element of saint- 
 liness in our harmless and healthful recreation than in the 
 dirt-worm habit of perpetually delving for filthy lucre, and 
 there is a great deal more of rock-bed common sense in a 
 man who cheerfully spends ten dollars to preserve his health 
 than in one who would rather jeopard his health than spend 
 a dollar. No honest angler would ever wet a line if there 
 were nothing in the art besides the mere material pleasure it 
 affords him. But it has other and higher attractions — 
 attractions which reach into the aesthetic realm and lift its 
 votaries up to the very border-lnnd of Bulah." 
 
 "We can all, I am sure," said another of our number, 
 "speak from our own personal experience on this point. 
 Two or (hree hours a day of the forty or fifty I pass on 
 angling-waters every year, give me all the fishing I desire. 
 The intervening time is filled up very delightfully in leis- 
 urely rambling through the silent woods; in reclining 
 beneath some umbrageous arbor, 
 
 'Whose green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, 
 
 And make a checkered shadow on the ground,' 
 
 and which overlooks the lake or stream on the borders of 
 
 which I have pitched my tent ; in clambering to the summit 
 
72 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 of some lofty eminence which gives me an enchanting view 
 of the vast forests spread out inimitably before me; in float- 
 ing hither and thither, where the kingly salmon 
 
 'Cuts with his flashing oars the silvery stream;' 
 in listening to the music of singing birds and to the melody 
 of rippling waters; in lazily loitering about our cosy camp; 
 in filling my exulting lungs with the pure atmosphere in 
 which I am enveloped, and in inhaling the delectable odors 
 of the virgin woods as they are borne to me by the summer 
 zephyrs which sweep down from the forest-clad mountains 
 with the refreshing balminess of the breath of the morning. 
 Fishing is but a pleasant incident in these forest experiences. 
 To me it simply gives zest to what, independently of it, 
 is a source of perpetual delight. Possibly, at first, I might 
 not have sought out these quiet places if I had had no taste 
 for angling; but certain it is that angling would never have 
 come to be to me what it is if it had not been associated 
 with, and if it were not a part of, these other and higher 
 sources of mental and physical delights. I am sure, also, 
 that I am not exceptional either in my tastes or in my habits 
 from the great mass of the brotherhood. There is not a 
 fluttering leaf, a rippling rapid, a silver cascade, a mo- 
 mentary sun-glint, a passing shadow, a bird note, a tiny 
 flower, a feathery fern, or any one of a thousand other 
 •things of beauty' we see and hear where our pastime 
 draws us, which is not remembered by the appreciative 
 angler equally with the rise and strike and swirl of trout or 
 salmon." 
 
 ''That is true, every word of it," was the reply. ''Angling 
 never yet made a bad man woise, while it has made a great 
 many good men better. I admit that all anglers are not saints, 
 but I insist that they would be less saintly if they were not 
 anglers. For the recreation brings its votaries into close and 
 constant contact with whatever is sublime and beautiful and 
 exalting in nature, and no one can long hold communion and 
 loving fellowship with the thing created without acquiring 
 a higher appreciation of the beneficence, wisdom and power 
 of its Creator. " 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 73 
 
 ' 'There is, " I suggested, ' 'one beautiful tiling about angling 
 which is well worth taking into account : one never wearies 
 of it. Other pleasures grow stale or insipid, but this acquires 
 new fascination with every new experience. This is the 
 verdict of all who, 'e'en down to old age,' have secured 
 mental rest and physical vigor from the practice of the gentle 
 art, which good Sir Henry Wotton found to be 'rest to his 
 mind, a cheerer of spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer 
 of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passion«, a procurer of 
 contentedness, begetting peace and patience in those who 
 profess and practice it. ' 
 
 "I have a friend who is the very type and embodiment of 
 a happy angler and an honest man. 
 
 'Age sits with decent grace, upon his visage, 
 And worthily becomes his silver locks; 
 He wears the marks of many years well spent, 
 Of virtue, truth well tried, and wise experience.' 
 
 * 'He has fished for fifty years, and is to-day even more eager 
 to take his place on angling waters than when he first felt 
 the ecstatic thrill which comes to all who have ever had the 
 good fortune to kill a salmon. Here is what he says to me 
 
 in a recent note : 
 
 "At Home, Dec. 12, 1882. 
 *'M>/ dear D.: 
 
 "What has become of you? Have you again been playing Cincin- 
 natus on your Western ranch, or are you simply digging yourself out 
 from beneath the political avalanche under which you and all of us 
 were buried in November? 
 
 "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so do I pant for the 
 coming of the time of the singing of birds when it will be right to 
 go a-fishing, where 
 
 'Soft whispers run along the leafy woods, 
 
 And mountains whistle to the murmuring floods.' 
 
 "What a blessed time we shall have (D. V.) exploring the beautiful 
 lakes mapped out for us by our faithful henchman, wherein no white 
 man has ever yet cast a fly 1 I have 'dreams in the night' about them ; 
 for I know what they must be from what we have already seen of 
 two of them. Husband your vitality, my dear fellow, that, you may 
 be able to make the circuit, 
 
 "Six months yet before the 20th of June! Meanwhile I will have 
 passed my seventieth birthday, and as you, old chap, are 'there or 
 thereabouts,' you cannot greatly boast over your humble servant. 
 But, next to a vigorous youth commend me to a lusty old age 
 
74 T^IXTEH talks on SUMyiER PASTIMES. 
 
 and this is what both of us have liad vouchsafed to us— for which- 
 devout thanks. But would it have been so but for the rest, recupera 
 tion and repose which have come to us from our annual visits to 
 salmon waters? 
 
 "No politics in mine, if you please, for politics at present form no 
 part of my mental ailment. I simply keep the mn of things— feel- 
 ing veiy much as Bret Harte's Abner Dean of 'The Society of the 
 Stanislaus" felt: 
 *Then Abner Dean, of Angel's, raised a point of order, when 
 A chunk of old red sandstone struck him in the abdomen, 
 And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, 
 And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.' 
 
 ' 'As ever and forever » yours, H. " 
 
 **The lakes referred to in the foregoiug note are trout lakes 
 in the vicinity of the salmon river myself and friend an- 
 nually visit. We had heard of them but could find no one 
 who had ever visited all of them. Last summer T^e re- 
 quested our local servitor to hunt them up and make a map 
 of them. This he has done, and I anticipate as much 
 pleasure in visiting- them as I do in fishing our favorite pools 
 for salmon — not alone because we are sure to find them 
 full of trout, but because we have found the two or three 
 of the group we have already seen perfect gems of beauty. 
 From my very first visit to the woods I have had a passion 
 to hunt up new places, and make side excursions whenever 
 I could hear of anything worth visiting. To do so often 
 involved hard work, but that fact simply added to the fas- 
 cination of the habit, and, I am inclined to believe, has 
 contributed to the large measure of vigor which has con- 
 tinued with me through all these decades. Now that I have 
 reached my three-score y ears and ten, I may not be able to 
 pass over rough places or climb steep hills as sprightly as in 
 the long ago, but I can do both passably well still, and find 
 no abatement in the delight these adventures and the pleas- 
 ant places they reveal afford me. Indeed, I am not sure 
 that my fondness for them has not even outrun my passion 
 for the excitement derived from the more material incidents 
 connected with angling. Of this, however, I am sure, that 
 every new exploration reveals to me new beauties ; that 
 many pretty bits of scenery that in my former greater 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 75 
 
 haste were passed byunroticed, now attract my attention 
 and excite my admiration. Whether this is because we be- 
 come more observant as we advance in years, or because 
 our tastes, like our virtues and our vices, grow by what 
 they feed u[»on, I cannot say. But this I know, that 1 look 
 forward to no phase of the pastime with more glowing an- 
 ticipation than to these delightful rambles." 
 
 "I notice," said one of our coterie, "that you speak of 
 yourself and friend in a way that leaves the impression that 
 you two make up your entire party in these annual excur- 
 sions. Is that so?" 
 
 "Yes, not because we are unsociable or exclusive, but 
 because we have both been taught by experience that the 
 fewer cogs the less friction. I have known the start of a 
 party of five or six delayed for a week because some one of 
 the number was not quite ready; and not infrequently the 
 equanimity of a whole camp is disturbed because some one 
 wishes to go when others do not, or to stay when others 
 wish to 'fold up their tents, like the Arabs, and silent steal 
 away.' In a crowd, some are night birds, who never care 
 to *go home 'till morning,' or to bed either, while others 
 deem sleep and regular hours as necessary to comfort in the 
 woods as at home. Both classes may enjoy themselves 
 equally well, but, though they may not say so, each in their 
 hearts wish "tother dear charmers away.* It is best, there- 
 fore, when it can be done, that only those whose tempera- 
 ments and home habits are similar should camp together, 
 that as little as possible should interpose to mar the pleasure 
 of these forest visits. My first experiences were in crowds. 
 Later on, the number of my angling companions was 
 gradually curtailed, until, during recent years, two of us, 
 whose ideas of comfort and of times and seasons are always 
 in harmony, constitute a 'party^ as happy and contented as 
 'two drops of water blended into one.' " 
 
 "But,'^ said my questioner, "how do you manage to pass 
 the evenings? You must get talked out after a while, with 
 only two of you to contribute to the common stock.'' 
 
 * 'That would bo true if my friend was like some fellows I 
 
70 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 
 
 know, who are really *talked out' before they begin to talk 
 at all, because they never have anything either useful or 
 edifying to say. " 
 
 "That's all very well, but for my part, when I am in the 
 woods 1 don't care to be very 'edifying' myself nor to be 
 very greatly edified by others, if by 'edifying' you mean 
 only such conversation as would be expected from a party 
 of monks in a cloister or of a bevy of savans in a salon." 
 
 "Nor do I, for I don't go to the woods myself to be super- 
 latively grave, but to be innocently happy. My companion 
 is aufait in all the intricacies of the law, in all the mysteries 
 of the sciences, and, like all the graduates of Old Union 
 when its historical President was at its head, he is as pro- 
 found in the classics as he is familiar with current events. 
 There is no subject about which he cannot converse — 
 gravely, if the subject demands it, or humorously if other- 
 wise. And as for myself, ask him, and if his friendship 
 does not induce him to hide my faults, he will tell you that, 
 while lounging around our camp-fire, I talk 'an infinite 
 deal of nonsense; more than any man in all Venice.' No; 
 there is neither wearisome sameness nor somnolent gravity 
 in our party of two during the restful hours between early 
 gloaming and our night retreat. If our conversation is not 
 always what would please a fool if it is never what would 
 disgust a scholar." 
 
 "I can very well believe that; but it has always seemed 
 to me that at least a third party is necessary to give piquancy 
 to persoaal jests; for how can one laugh at his own joke, 
 or how can the other fellow be expected to laugh when he 
 is its subject. A looker on in such an encounter is a mighty 
 stimulant to one's wit." 
 
 "As to that, we are never without subjects that provoke 
 laughter; but we always find it pleasanter to laugh with 
 than at each other. He is walldng on thin ice and 
 making a dangerous experiment with assumed friendship 
 who habitually indulges in either personal or practical jokes. 
 He must be something more than a saint who always re- 
 ceives them with equanimity, and he a great deal worse 
 
WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 77 
 
 than an average sinner who, having a giant's strength in 
 that direction, persistently uses it like a giant. No 'prac- 
 tical joker' ever long retains the hearty respect of his friends, 
 nor their hearty friendship either. A persistent punster is 
 less offensive. He is only a bore; the other fellow is a nuis- 
 ance." 
 
 ''Talking of practical jokes, ''you remember the 'good 
 thing' played on Mark Antony when he was fishing with 
 Cleopatra : 
 
 Charmion—^'' 'Twas merry when 
 
 You wager'd on your angling ; when your diver 
 Did hang a salt-flsh on his hook, which he 
 With fervency drew up." 
 
 " 'Tony must have been in a sweet-tempered mood just 
 then to have received the joke complacently. I once knew 
 a miserly sort of a fellow who would almost literally sleep 
 on the brink of the best 'spring-hole' within a five miles* 
 circuit, in order to retain its monopoly. To punish him 
 for his unsportsmanlike behavior, one of the guides was 
 bribed to launch a hemlock bush upon the current every 
 two minutes, at a point just above the coveted spring-hole ; 
 and while the astonished angler went up stream to investi- 
 gate, another chap took possession and held it through the 
 day. When told of the joke, instead of enjoying it he was 
 very angry, and I doubt whether he had a hearty laugh in 
 a twelve-month." 
 
 "The danger of practical jokes," I interposed, "is that 
 they are generally aimed at the most vulnerable point in the 
 victim's harness. For this reason, as in the case just cited, 
 they cut, because they are somehow felt to be deserved. A 
 proverbially thrifty chap would not feel half so much 
 offended by being presented with the empty shell of a 
 sucked egg as would a spendthrift who had 'wasted his sub- 
 stance in riotous living. ' " 
 
 "You remember the case of "our practical joker 
 
 had begun to remark, when he was interrupted by the most 
 exemplary of our number, who said to him : 
 
 "Now, Jeemes, my good fellow, 1 see what you are 
 
78 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES, 
 
 driving at. You know only too well how you always fasci- 
 nate me when you draw your long bow, and you know just 
 as well that my time is up ; and yet you are deliberately and 
 with coldly concocted malice, trying to beguile me into for- 
 getfulness and thereby subject me to a 'curtain lecture' when 
 I get home. But you can't play any such practical joke on 
 me any more then you could humbug me by telling me I 
 was hitched to a log when I felt the twitch of a salmon. 
 So, 'go to' old man, and good night to all of you." 
 
Forest and Stream. 
 
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