Pleasures of Angling

by: George Dawson

Chapter I.

Prefatory and Apologetic

To al you that ben virtuous: gentyll: and free borne I wryte and make this fymple tretife folowynge: by whyche ye may haue the full craft of anglynge to dyfport you at your lufte, to the entent that your aege maye the more floure and the more longer to endure – [Treatife of Fyffhynge with an Angle, 1496]

Whatever pleasure a veteran may find in occasionally recounting his deeds of valor, the rehearsal at some times becomes monotonous. So with these talks of Angling. They were well enough years ago, but they seem to the writer thereof hardly in harmony with the assumed gravity of “furrows,” “wrinkles” and “hoary locks.” Not that a true angler ever passes the line which takes him into the land of ailments and decrepitude. It is the glory of the art that its disciples never grow old. The muscles may relax and the beloved rod become a burden, but the fire of enthusiasm kindled in youth is never extinguished. The time, however, does come when one is reluctant to parade the sources of even his innocent pleasures, except, perhaps, to those “simple wise men” whom he knows to be in sympathy with him, and who can appreciate the too generally unappreciated truth that that pleasure is only worthy the pursuit of men or of angels which “worketh no evil.”

But so many kind friends who find delight in the pursuit of the gentle art, have importuned me to forego my purpose to be silent, and to permit them, just this once, to enjoy what they are pleased to characterize as “the pleasure they derive” from these rambling jottings, that I have reluctantly consented to gratify the few with whom I know I shall be en rapport from the start, at the hazard of displeasing the many whose highest conceptions of angling have been derived from that libelous old adage of “a rod and line, with a fool at one end and a fish at the other,” and who, because of this misconception, have neither sympathy with nor respect for a recreation which the wisest and gentlest and most lovable men of all ages have recognized as the best and simplest and most effective medicine for mind and body which a kind Providence has vouchsafed erring and ailing humanity.

Although my last was my thirty-fifth annual visit to angling waters, it was anticipated with greater interest and with higher hopes of quiet enjoyment than any which had preceded it. And this, as all biography teaches, has been the experience of all true lovers of the angle. Sir Humphrey Davy retained his enthusiasm to the last. When, like Jacob, he had to lean heavily upon his staff, the author of Noctes Ambrosiana would wade his favorite streams with all the pleasure of early manhood; and long after every other delight had waxed and waned, this remained as the veritable elixir of perpetual youth. “Kit North’s” daughter (Mrs. Gordon) gives this charming picture of him when a hopeless invalid:

“And then he gathered around him, when the spring morning brought gay jets of sunshine into the little room where he lay, the relics of a youthful passion, one that with him never grew old. It was an affecting sight to see him busy, nay quite absorbed, with the fishing tackle about his bed, propped up with pillows—his noble head, yet glorious with its flowing locks, carefully combed by attentive hands, and falling on each side of his unfaded face. How neatly he picked out each elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing it with trembling hand across the white coverlet, and then, replacing it in his pocket-book, he would tell, ever and anon, of the streams he used to fish in of old, and of the deeds he had performed in his childhood and youth.”

And the experience of the past is that of to-day – not among the eminent alone, but among the lowly as well, who find pure delight and refreshing recreation in quiet forests and by the side of crystal waters, with no other companions than rod and reel, singing birds and summer zephyrs. “As Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, ‘Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;’ and so, if I may be judge, God did never make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than Angling.”

 But it would be an inexcusable exaggeration to assume that this strong liking grows upon those who only engage in the grosser departments of the art. The greatest enthusiast soon wearies of bait and troll as lures for pike and pickerel, or sun fish and perch. As course food palls on the palate, so the love of angling soon dies out unless it reaches up to the higher plane of trout and salmon, lured by the tiny fly, kept in check by the gossamer-like leader, and conquered by the skillful manipulation of the slender rod, which curves to the pressure as gracefully as the tall pine to the blast of the tempest. It is only in this higher department of the art that the angler finds the witchery of his vocation and the octegenarian the ecstacy which gives to him ever increasing pleasure and delight. If the fascinating art had no other commendation than this, that the pleasure which it affords never abates but grows in attractiveness and intensity with every repetition, it would be worthy of cultivation, and should commend itself to all who deem it possible for old age to have some more tangible joy than that afforded by the barren recollections of the distant past.

Nor is it alone during the all too brief period in which he is actually engaged in whipping the rivers and bagging the spoil that the angler derives delight from his art. Weeks before it is practicable to visit “the woods,” or proper to even attempt to “entice the finny tribe from their aqueous element,” the chronic angler finds exquisite delectation in the needful preparation for his sojourn

Where lakes and rills and rivulets do flow;

The lofty woods, the forests wide and long.

Adorned with leaves, and branches fresh and green,

In whose cool bowers the birds with many a song

Do welcome with their choir the Summer’s Queen;

The meadows fair, where Flora’s gifts among

Are intermixed, with verdant grass between;

The silver-scaled fish that softly swim

Within the sweet brook’s crystal watery stream.

The recollection of what has been and the anticipation of what is to be; the quiet discourse of men with like tastes, of past successes and of anticipated triumphs; reminiscences of river and lake and forest and camp-fire, make up a series of prospective and retrospective pleasures akin to those experienced by the old soldier fondling his trust matchlock and “fighting his battles o’er again.”

And unpacking one’s kit is like meeting old friends. Every marred fly, every frayed leader, every well-worn tip and line and reel, revives pleasant memories of river, pool or camp-fire, of “rise,” or “strike,” or struggle, only less real than the reality itself, for “only itself can be its parallel.”

No marvel that apostles and prophets, emperors and kings, philosophers and bishops, soldiers and statesmen, scholars and poets, and the quiet, gentle and contemplative of all ages and of all professions, have found delight in angling, or that they have been made the better and the wiser, and the purer and the happier, by its practice. It brings its devotee into close and intimate communion with nature. It takes him into flowery meads and shady woods; by the side of murmuring brooks, silvery cascades and crystal rivers; through deep ravines, sentineled by cloud-clapped mountains, and into valleys clothed in vernal beauty, and made vocal with rippling waters and the warbling of feathered songsters. It would have been strange indeed if an art which requires such surroundings, and which can only be successfully practiced by the exercise of patience and a quiet temper, had not been discovered by Sir Henry Wooton to be “a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;” or that what thus ministers medicine to the mind while it invigorates the body, should not prove attractive to all who

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

    Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

To many this prologue may seem as irrelevant as angling seems simple to the uninitiated; but I have been lured on by my theme as I have often been by the shady banks and singing waters beside which I have cast my fly through the long summer day, in sheer forgetfulness of time and distance and all else save the consciousness of supreme enjoyment. An angler is, from necessity, a rambler; and if he wields his pen as he makes his casts, he must needs drop his thoughts as he drops his leader, whenever and however the inspiration of the moment suggests.

Chapter II

Angling and Anglers Vindicated

We care not who says,

And intends it dispraise,

That an angler to a fool is next neighbor,

Let him prate; what care we;

We’re as honest as he,

And so let him take that for his labor!

                        -- [Charles Cotton.

What good Sir Izaak Walton said two  hundred years ago, of those who scoff at angling as “a heavy, contemptible, dull recreation,” is quite as appropriate for their successors of to-day.

“You know, gentlemen, it is an easy thing to scoff at any art or recreation: a little wit, mixed with ill-nature, confidence and malice, will do it; but though they often venture boldly, yet they are often caught, even in their own trap, according to that of Lucian, the father of the family of scoffers:

‘Lucian well skilled in scoffing, this hath writ:

Friend, that’s your folly which you think your wit;

This you vent oft, void both of wit and fear,

Meaning another, when yourself you jeer!’

“If to this you add what Solomon says of scoffers, that ‘they are an abomination to mankind,’ let him that thinks  fit scoff on, and be a scoffer still; bit I account them enemies to me and to all that love angling.

“And for you that have heard many grave, serious men pity anglers, let me tell you, sir, that there are many who are taken by others to be serious and grave men, which we contemn and pity,--men that are taken to be grave because nature hath made them a sour complexion, money-getting men, men that spend all their time first in getting and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented; for such poor-rich men, we anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves so happy. No, no, sir, we enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions.***

“And for our ‘simplicity,’ if you mean by that a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were, as most anglers are, quiet men and followers of peace—men that were so simply wise as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die; if you mean such men as lived in those times when there were fewer lawyers, when men might have had a lordship conveyed to them on a piece of parchment no bigger than your hand, thought several sheets will not do it safely in this wiser age,--I say, sir, if you take us anglers to be such simple men as I have spoken of, then myself and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood; but if by simplicity you mean to express a general defect in those that profess the excellent art of angling, I hope in time to disabuse you, and make the contrary appear so evidently, that, if you will have but patience to hear me, I shall remove all the anticipations that discourse, or time, or prejudice, have possessed you against that laudable and ancient art; for I know it is worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.”

They are greatly in error who suppose that all there is of fishing is to fish. That is but the body of the art. Its soul and spirit is in what the angler sees and feels—in the murmur of the brook; in the music of the birds; in the simple beauty of the wild-flowers which peer at him from every nook in the valley and from every sunny spot on the hill-side; in the moss-covered rock; in the ever-shifting sunshine and shadow which give ever-varying beauty to the sides and summits of the mountains; in the bracing atmosphere which environs him; in the odor of the pine and hemlock and spruce and cedar forests, which is sweeter to the senses of the true woodsman than all the artificially compounded odors which impregnate the boudoirs of artificial life; in the spray of the waterfall; in the grace and curve and dash of the swift-rushing current; in the whirl of the foaming eddy; in the transparent depths of the shaded pool where, in mid-summer, the speckled trout and silver salmon “most do congregate;” in the revived appetite; in the repose which comes to him while reclining upon his sweet-smelling couch of hemlock boughs; in the hush of the woods when moon and stars shine in upon him through histent or bark-covered shanty; in the morning song of the robin; in the rapid-coursing blood, quickened by the pure unstinted mountain air which imparts to the lungs the freshness and vigor of its own vitality; in the crackling of the newly kindled camp-fire; in the restored health, and in the thousand other indescribable and delightful realities and recollections of the angler’s camp-life on lake or river during the season when it is right to “go a-fishing.” It is these, and not alone or chiefly the mere act of catching fish, which render the gentle art a source of constant and ever-growing pleasure. But to attain unto the full measure of delight which the pastime affords, the angler must not be merely an expert in the mechanism of the art. Unless he can, withal, appreciate the beauties of nature, and “look from nature up to nature’s God,” he has neither the spirit of the old masters of the angle, nor a just comprehension of its refining and elevating possibilities.

While playing his vocation in these quiet places, with no noisy babblers to break in upon his medications, with every nerve thrilling with the intensest satisfaction, with the mind as free from rasping care as the pure atmosphere in which he is enveloped is from the miasma of the far-off lagoon, and with heart and brain in harmonious accord and sympathy with the peaceful serenity of the scene and the occasion, is it strange that sometimes he makes the old woods ring with his shouts in the very abandon of delight? It may not be that these raptures come to all the brethren of the angle, but they come in full measure to but few besides; because the true angler, “born son,” as good Sir Izaak hath it, has within himself, more than those who have no sympathy with his craft, the elements which are necessary to bring him thus en rapport with Nature. And I say all this, not to elevate the art above what is becoming, but to show that the angler, in the quiet pursuit of his craft, finds other attractions, purer and higher and more ennobling, than the mere act of taking fish. Let not those who are so “of the earth earthy” as to be unable to find any other pleasure in this pastime than that derived  from “striking” and “killing” their prey, write themselves down as the disciples of the quiet and gentle Father of the art. For they are “bastards and not sons,” and merit a place rather among the pot-hunters of the guild than among its appreciative disciples.

But fondness for fishing is no proof of sanctification. The selfish man at home is selfish in his pleasures; and there is no pastime where one is oftener tempted to be selfish than in angling. Few, indeed, are those who would send a friend to a favorite pool before he himself had tried it. To do so is the very highest proof of magnanimity. I have known a few such in my experience—men who, if asked for their coat would give their cloak also; but they are so rare that I can count them on my fingers. There comes up before me, as I write, the grandest specimen of unselfishness, in this regard, who ever cast a fly or kindled a campfire. If he chanced to strike a “school,” or discovered other signs of abundant sport, his cheery shout would always indicate to his companions his desire that they might share his good fortune. And this was but a type of his character. He was and still is a living illustration of the scripture assurance that it is “more blessed to give than to receive.” And I have just received a note from another friend of kindred spirit, who knew no way by which he could better emphasize his appreciation of a trifling favor than to say: “It will give me great pleasure to reciprocate your kindness; and should we ever again meet in the forest, and beside a pool where the speckled beauties await our deceptive lure, I will yield it, and grant to you its undisturbed possession.” And he would keep his promise; for thirty years of angling has rendered him as unselfish in his amusements as he is gentle in his social life.

CHAPTER III

Angling as a Medicine

I concur with those who speak of the pastime of angling as a medicine, not alone from my own experience, although that may count for something, but from the great number of strong men with whom I have been brought into intimate contact during my more than thirty years of outdoor life, and who, from their youth up, have found nothing so invigorating as the pure air of the mountains; nothing so soothing, after the toil and worry and fret of business, as the silence of the woods; nothing so pervading in its mellowing influence upon nerve and brain and spirit as the pleasant murmur of the flowing river; nothing so health-giving as the aroma of nature’s grand forest laboratory; and nothing so exhilarating as the rise and swirl and rush of trout or salmon. Those whom I have thus known, with scarcely an exception, have preserved the vigor of lusty youth longer and more uniformly than their contemporaries who have sought other means of recuperation and other sources of enjoyment;--from which I infer either that few but those who are blest with robust constitutions ever acquire a passion for angling, or that the pastime itself creates the healthful vitality which insures a vigorous old age. But whether the pastime is merely preservative or is really curative in its medicinal effects, it is certainly beneficent, and deserves the high place it holds in the affections of its happy, healthy and enthusiastic votaries.

However angling may be classed by others—whether as a fool’s pastime or as a wise man’s recreation—I have always found great pleasure in recognizing what its indulgence costs me as so much saved from my doctor’s bill. And as my doctor, who passed his seventy-fifth year before “the grasshopper became a burden,” was himself a life-long disciple of the gentle art, he never chided me for my tastes nor coveted what was kept from him by their indulgence. And now, when this “beloved physician” is “wearing awa’ to the land o’ the leal” as gently and as peacefully as the summer’s sun retires to its rosy couch, his eye receives new luster as he recalls the pleasant hours of his early youth while angling in the lochs and burns of his native land and in the brooks and rivers of his adopted country.

And just here is where too many of our people make their great mistake. They seek recreation to regain health, not to preserve it. If half the time were given to keep strong that is consumed in the hopeless effort to get strong, there would be fewer invalids in the land—fewer men prematurely aged, and fewer women bent and broken in the midst of their years. “Prevention is better than cure,” and no class of men are more fortunate than those whose love of angling frequently draws them from the wearisome cares of business and the suffocating atmosphere of absorbing trade, into the green fields and shaded forest, where brook and river and lake afford ample pastime and healthful recreation.

I think our people are improving in this regard. There are more who appreciate the curative properties of change and repose to-day than ever before; and the time is coming when the expenses of a brief vacation, whether to hamlet or palace, to lake or river, to forest or sea-shore, to valley or mountain, will enter into every one’s calculations as regularly as any other of the necessaries of life. If, as some allege, Americans have degenerated in muscular development and in general physique, it may be attributed to their intense and unceasing application to business, rather than to any tying deteriorating in our climate. It is quite as true of the worker, whether of brain or of muscle, who never gives himself a day’s real rest in a score of years, as it is of the wicked, “that he shall not live out half his days.” Those who deliberately and from a settled purpose to get gain at any cost, wear themselves out prematurely, are foremost among “the wicked” referred to; and the admonition is for their benefit as much as for the epicure or debauchee.

I remember, many years ago, while “lying round loose” for a few days at Lebanon, meeting a friend who accosted me with, “Why, D., what are you doing here? I had not heard you were ailing, and supposed you enjoyed perfect health?” “Yes,” I replied, “thanks to a kind Providence, I am never really sick, and to-day I am as free from ailment as a sky-lark from bronchitis.” “Well, I am glad to hear it, certainly; but if you are perfectly well, why are you here?” “To keep well, judge.” I will never forget the shadow of sadness which crossed his care-worn countenance as he replied: “Yours is the true philosophy. I have been working very hard for thirty years, and this is my first vacation; and I am here now, not from choice but from necessity. My doctor tells me I have impaired my constitution by over-work, and that my only hope is rest. But I fear I have postponed this rest too long. You and those like you, who will have your recreation whatever becomes of business, are the wisest men. You rest to preserve health and not to regain it. I am seeking what, by my too close application to business, I have prematurely lost; and it is very doubtful whether I shall find what I am seeking.” And his fear was prophetic. He died in the midst of his years—a man exemplary in all things save in this neglect of himself. And for this he paid the inevitable penalty.

It is a sorry sight to see an over-worked, sallow-visaged, prematurely aged man of business, voluntarily digging his own grave. Yet thousands are doing this, because they will not seek rest until their accumulations will permit them to “retire” to enjoy what they have “made,” and when such me do “retire,” they find themselves possessed of a fortune and a broken constitution. Who, then, are the wise men? They who work without cessation or intermission until they are compelled to seek lost health, or they who prefer “prevention” to “cure?” If to merely “work” was all of life, even then would it be economy to spend an occasional month in the woods; for here the muscles as well as the brain and the heart find recuperative aliment. The scripture hath it: “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent”—not that he always does wrong to his neighbor, but that he too often and most inexcusably does wrong to himself.

But angling is not alone a health-retaining and a health-giving pastime. It is a medicine to the ind as well as to the body; and unlike too many of the pleasures of life, it scatters no seeds from which the nettle of remorse may grow to sting the conscience or drive sunshine from the heart. Like the unclouded friendships of youth, it leaves only joyous memories. Peter did not weep because he took fish with net or angle, but because he did what it has become a proverb no angler can do and have “luck,” and if Uncle Toby’s hasty speech had been as free from guile as an angler’s heart while plying his vocation, no angel’s tear need to have fallen to blot out the record. Blessed pastime, whose day never ends, but whose sun casts a perpetual radiance upon the “simple wise man” who, regularly as the return of “the time of the singing of birds,” sayeth to himself, “I go a-fishing!”

We thank God, therefore, for these woods, these mountains and these ever-singing waters. They are not only the angler’s Elysium, but the great medicine chest of nature.

CHAPTERS V & VI

These chapters are discussions of certain angling friends of George Dawson and are omitted.

CHAPTER VII

Who Went A-Fishing, and How They Reached the River

I now believed

The happy day approach’d, nor were

My hopes deceived.

                        --[Dryden.

Every one, I presume, looks forward hopefully to the realization of some fancied good, or to the attainment of some coveted pleasure. Life would be even more somber and leaden than it is but for this ever-living hopefulness. It is the hidden sunshine which gives to the darkest could its silver lining – the unseen hand which “smoothes the wrinkled front of weary care.” No matter that these pleasant visions seldom assume the form and substance of reality. “Castles in the air” have often happier tenants than those on terra firma.

The enthusiastic angler is never content with minor achievements. His constant expectation is that every new cast will afford him some new conquest, and that the grand sport of to-day will be excelled by the grander sport of to-morrow. Of no others can it be said more truthfully:

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;”-

hope not merely to capture the best of the fish for which he is angling, but hope that at some time not far off he may capture his proper quota of the gamiest fish that swims. During many more than a score of years I have found great pleasure in angling for trout, but at no time in all these years have I ceased to hope that sometime in the golden future kind fortune would favor me with the opportunity to kill a salmon. And at length, after many years of “hope deferred,” the opportunity came, the excursion was projected, the waters were reached, the cast was made, hope became fruition and the coveted result was achieved. A great many pleasurable “first times” are jotted upon the memory of every one – the merchant’s first successful venture, the lawyer’s first case and the politician’s first triumph—but none of these, nor all of them combined, can compare with the delight which comes to the enthusiastic angler from the rise and swirl and strike and capture of his first salmon. I speak from experience, and propose, for the delectation of those who are still hoping, to enter into particulars, not of that single incident alone, but of the many incidents which made our three weeks’ sojourn on the Cascapedia delightfully enjoyable.

I owe to Gen. Arthur, Collector of the Port of New York, the opportunity of experiencing what will be “a joy forever.” For several years that gentlemen has given his summer vacations to salmon fishing. There are few more expert anglers and none who have a higher appreciation of the gentle art. His scores have always indicated skill and perseverance—the two essentials of success. The party, of which the General was Chief, consisted also of R.G. Dun, of new York, D. Archie Pell, of Staten island, and the writer hereof. Mr. Dun, like the General, had had several years’ successful experience. Col. Pell (like his honored father before him) had had large practice in every other department of angling. But, with myself, he was about to try his “’prentice han’” on salmon waters and to make his first cast for his diploma as a graduate in the high school of the craft. I could not have fallen into better hands, nor have been brought into the association of gentlemen in more perfect accord and sympathy in all hopeful anticipation of the great pleasure in reserve for us.

The outfit for salmon fishing, though somewhat expensive if of the best—and the best, in strength if not in beauty, it always should be—is both compact and simple, consisting of a rod (costing anywhere from $35 to $60 in New York, or from $15 to $30 in St. John), an India-rubber reel ($15), an oil-boiled silk line, 300 or 400 feet in length ($8 to $12), a dozen double gut leaders with single gut droppers ($6), five or six dozen assorted salmon flies ($6 a dozen in New York or less than half that price in St. John), and a steel gaff ($2). The rods and lines may be duplicated if “expense is no object;” but only by some unforeseen accident or inexcusable carelessness need either the one or the other give out. No one is more merciless with rod and line than myself, and yet neither failed me during our expedition. Instances of failure, however, to some of the part (but not from any want of skill) occurred, and under circumstances which sorely tried the saintly tempers of these unfortunate victims of misplaced confidence. But as a rule, any strain beyond what a moderately well made rod will bear safely would almost certainly result in the loss of your fish; and the oiled line, if not imperceptibly defective, has the capacity to resist five times the pressure which should ever be employed to kill a salmon. Its great weight is given to it, not to render it secure merely, but rather to adapt it the better for casting.

In regard to supplies, whatever is needful can be better secured, and much more moderately, at Quebec or St. John than at any point this side the lien.  But what may be deemed “needful” depends entirely upon the tastes and appetites of the prospective consumers. One gentleman whom we met too, with himself and two guides, in a single canoe, all that he considered “needful” for a thirty days’ sojourn, while another loaded two canoes, besides the one he occupied himself, with what he thought “needful” for a fortnight’s excursion. I can only say to whoever may be anxious on this point, as was kindly said to our party, that it is well to “live low on the river.” If, however, the advice shall be as remorselessly disregarded by any of my readers who may be contemplating a trip, as it was by our commissary, I may regret it but I shall not be surprised.

[[The remainder of the chapter deals with the routes to get to the water that was fished]]

CHAPTER VIII

Our First Camp and a Hearty Welcome

His grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning;

There’s some conceit or other likes him well

When that he bids “Good morrow” with such spirit.

                                                                --[Shakspeare.

The bark-canoes used upon these rivers are fragile-looking but strong and buoyant. They are not only more steady and secure, in a heavy sea, than the boats used in the Adirondacks, but are capable of bearing heavier burdens. On rivers where the current is swift and the rapids heavy (as in the Cascapedia) two men are necessary to propel them up stream with safety and comfort; and even then an average of two miles an hour is considered a fair rate of speed. The boatmen sit when paddling or stand when polling, (one at each end) while the passenger makes himself very comfortable on a slightly elevated seat in the middle of the canoe.

A novel, picturesque and exciting scene was presented as our six canes moved off, in “Indian file,” up the rapid waters of the Cascapedia. The poles used are tipped with an iron tube, and make pleasant music as they strike upon the pebbly bottom of the river in perfect time.

The afternoon was charming. The sun shone out in full luster, but the cool breeze rendered the atmosphere inexpressibly delightful. The river is broad and its waters are as transparent as crystal. The foliage on either side was rich and varied, and the grand old hills which rise, most of the way, almost perpendicularly from the water, were clothed in gorgeous apparel. All our surroundings—the mode of conveyance, our dusky boatmen, the scenery, the object of our journey and the sport anticipated—were novel and inspiriting, and the four hours consumed in reaching our first camping ground, were four hours of unalloyed pleasure, to which the excitement of ascending the seemingly unascendable rapids largely contributed. To ascend rapids safely not only involves hard work but a quick eye and a stead hand. To allow the impetuous current to obtain a moment’s advantage would whirl the frail bark out of its course in an instant, and send it flying down upon the rocks to be dashed to pieces. It is, however, far less dangerous, though harder work, to go up than to come down these rapids. And yet, during the three weeks we were on the river, a hundred rapids, in which an Adirondack boat could not have lived a moment, were passed in perfect safety. The descent is especially exhilarating. The skill with which rocks and breakers and foam are avoided or surmounted, is a source of constant wonder and admiration. To pass through the pleasurable excitement of these dashing flights is alone worth a journey to any one of the rushing rivers where this experience can be had. The sensation of “running the rapids” is unlike anything otherwise attainable. It somewhat resembles that which one experiences from the return movement of a swing in full action; but the feeling is multiplied an hundred fold. As the rapid is approached, the water is generally as smooth as glass, and the light vessel seems drawn through it with lightning speed, as if moving upon the surface of transparent oil. From this it glides—and no other word so literally expresses the movement—into, and dashes through the foaming waters with the swiftness of a locomotive—the skilled boatmen guiding their craft past the exposed and hidden rocks by an easy and quiet motion of their paddles, as securely and as gracefully as the skilled “whip” guides his horses past any dangerous obstacle which presents itself in his pathway. This running the rapids is the very “poetry of motion,” and those who have never enjoyed the sensation have something very pleasurable yet in reserve.

The point selected for our first camp was eight miles from New Richmond, and in the immediate neighborhood of several of the best pools on the river. There is no desirable fly-fishing, at any season of the year, below them. Tide-water, within which seine-fishing is allowed, extends nearly up to them, and as—for some reason with which I am not sufficiently familiar to discourse—salmon do not readily, if ever, rise to a fly until they enter fresh water, it is never deemed worth while to wet your line until these pools are reached.

On arriving at our destination, we found Chief Justice Ritchie, of New Brunswick, and Chief Justice Gray, of Massachusetts, in camp, awaiting our arrival to move up higher in their pursuit of sport. They gave us a most cordial welcome—so cordial and so full of cheerful heartiness and good humor s to instantly dispel the reverential awe with which lain, unearned laymen are wont to look upon such eminent expounders of law and dispensers of justice. They had doffed their ermine and bade us welcome with unlaced dignity and grace, in flannel shirts and well-worn trousers. I have already referred to the buoyant spirits and charming hilarity of the Chief Justice of New Brunswick. He seemed an embodiment of good humor, as if he lived and moved and had his being in an atmosphere of perpetual sunshine. And Chief Justice Gray was like him in all the good qualities desirable in camp companionship. He is a man of grand physique—more than six fee high and well proportioned—and, at home, towers above the mass of his compeers in dignity and learning as he does above most men in comely stature. It was very pleasant to mark the simple enthusiasm with which these two eminent men gave us their piscatorial experiences and recounted their achievements with rod and reel. It reminded one of the grand characters of the past—of the princes, and poets, and bishops, and chancellors, and the quiet, contemplative, happy scholars and philosophers of all times—who have found their highest delectation in their pursuit of the delightful recreation of angling. It may not seem so to the plodding man of business, who deems all time wasted which does not bring golden grist to his mill; but it is nevertheless true that there have been multitudes of wise men, and good men, and happy men in all ages who, more than when honors or wealth came to them, have rejoiced when the times and seasons returned, when they could say to their friends, as Peter said to the disconsolate disciples, “I go a-fishing.” Amid his deepest gloom and despondency, this great-hearted apostle fell back instinctively upon his old vocation as the only source of comfort and relief. Multitudes of other heavy hears and aching brains have found like relief from the same source of harmless diversion.

These distinguished anglers had had grand success. It was Judge Gray’s first visit, but having had long experience in the minor departments of the art, he found but little difficulty in acquiring the higher skill which the more complicated work of salmon-fishing requires. He had numerous tropies to exhibit in proof of the success which had attended his maiden efforts, and he referred to them with as much enthusiasm and, I doubt not, with far more satisfaction, than he had ever referred to any of his most noted triumphs in the line of his profession. It is never in a spirit of mere boasting that a true angler alludes to his achievements, but because of the simple pleasure which, like the old soldier, he derives from “fighting his battles o’er again.” To rehearse the incidents connected with the capture of some famous fish, is to re-experience the thrilling sensations which accompanied the feat itself. They remain, like the recollections of some pleasant spoken word, or of some beautiful picture, or of some grand scene in nature, a joyous memory forever. He is an unhappy man who has not some pleasant wells of memory to draw upon, if it be true, as some thoughtful philosopher has said, that “half the joy of old age consists in the recollection of the pleasures of youth.”

A single incident in the experience of Chief Justice Ritchie is especially worth mentioning. Near the close of a day of fine sport he struck a thirty-pound salmon, which he tried in vain to kill before nightfall. It is a Herculean task, requiring the highest skill and every possible favoring opportunity, to capture such a fish. The chances are always against success at the best. But the venerable Chief found himself tied to this monster long after twilight had ceased to fall upon the face of the waters. The pool, always dark in its greatest depths, soon became black as a starless midnight. There were rocks on either side of him, rushing water above him and boiling rapids below him. His line was invisible, and the only perceptible sign of life around him or before him, was the tugging and rushing of the maddened salmon fighting for his life amid the thick darkness which every where prevailed. Under any circumstances, the venerable angler would rather, a thousand times, subject himself to the merciless criticisms which a wrong judicial decision might provoke, than to lose a fish. But under the circumstances in which, at this time, he was surrounded, he would rather have taken that fish than to have been placed on the wool-sack of the United Kingdom. And yet how could it be done? It was useless for him to soliloquize, as he did, “You beggar, I’ll fight you ‘till sunrise before you shall beat me.” Long before sunrise the fish might escape, the canoe be swamped in some merciless rapid, and the venerable Chief left stranded and dripping upon some inhospitable rock, with nothing to cheer him in his wretched loneliness but the roar of the thundering waters or the plaintive notes of the hooting night-owl. Fortunately, neither an all-night fight nor a possible shipwreck awaited him. His co-Chief Justice took in the situation as readily as he catches the point of a lawyer’s brief, improvised a few flambeaux and started off to the rescue. It was a timely interposition, resulting in perfect success. The flambeaux made the surroundings of the combatants bright as day, and in due time the salmon gave up the fight and was duly gaffed and brought into camp, escorted by the first torch-light procession in which either Chief had ever before been the principal actor.

CHAPTER IX

Capture of My First Salmon

My impatience to make my first cast and take my first salmon was so great that the hours consumed in pitching tents, unpacking stores and arranging camp generally, seemed a waste of precious moments. I did not wish, of course, to take advantage of the useful industry and greater patience of my companions; but I mentally voted them over nice in their anxiety to “make things comfortable” when, in my state of mind, the only thing which seemed requisite to the supremest comfort was the capture of a salmon. With that result achieved, I felt that I could be abundantly comfortable sitting upon a bare rock at high noon munching hard tack and bacon. I must in some way have manifested my restlessness, for the General, trying to hide his kindliness under a very thin veneering of brusqueness, said to me, “D., you are no earthly use here. I wish you would get out of the way and go a-fishing.” As this remark was made several hours before we had mutually agreed to begin work, I felt some little delicacy about taking advantage of the “ticket-of-leave” offered me. But as in the language of modern theology, I had an “inner consciousness” that I really was of “no use” as a tent-pitcher, and had no tact as “a man of all work” in camp preparations, I soon found myself moving canoe-ward, with my salmon and trout rods strung and my nerves in a tremor in anticipation of “the good time coming” when I would no longer have to say “I never killed a salmon.” I honestly meant to show my appreciation of the General’s kindness by confining myself exclusively to trout waters. And my resolution was adequate to the emergency until I became weary of the slaughter I was making of one, two, three and four-pound trout, and until (after floating down the shallow water) I was “brought up all standing” by the remark of my Indian canoe-man: “Trout plenty no more. Salmon pool here. If he should rise, trout rod no good.” My first impulse was to go immediately back to camp, and I had given the order to that effect when a grunt of surprise from my swarthy friend—who could not comprehend how any one could enter a salmon pool and leave it unfished—induced me first to hesitate, then to countermand the order, and then to appease my conscience by the remark: “Well, I will make a few casts by way of practice.”  No sooner said than down went the anchor at the head of what I afterward learned was one of the best pools on the river. As I seized my great salmon rod—which seemed like a cedar beam after the eight-ounce switch with which I had been fishing—and began to gradually extend my cast, I felt as I suppose the raw recruit feels when he first hears the rattle of the enemy’s musketry, or as some very timid men feel when, for the first time, they stand up before a great multitude of free and independent electors to entertain and enlighten them with those profound ebullitions of wisdom and those brilliant bursts of eloquence which are commonly considered the all-sufficient and matter-of-course ingredients of a stump speech. I had reached a cast of perhaps fifty feet, in a direct line, and was watching my fly as intently as ever astronomer watched the unfoldings of a newly discovered planet, when a monster head emerged from the water, and with distended jaws—disclosing his red gills so distinctly as to make his throat look, to my excited imagination, like a fiery furnace—made a dash (which seemed like the splurge of a sea-horse) for my fly. It was my duty, of course, to accept the challenge and “strike” at the right moment and so hook my fish and take the chances for the mastery. But I had no more power to “strike” than if every limb and nerve and muscle was paralyzed. My rod remained poised but motionless, and I stood gazing at the spot where the apparition appeared, in speechless amazement, while the fly—which had, for a single moment, been buried in that greatsepulcher—reappeared upon the surface quite unconscious of the terrible ordeal through which it had passed. I do not know that any one could have “knocked me down with a feather” at that particular moment; but I do know that I never before came so near “going off in a faith,” or found a cup of cold water more refreshing. I had heard of those who had had the “buck fever,” and I shall hereafter have more sympathy and greater respect for them, for I undoubtedly had the malady in its most aggravated form, and felt, as my astonished guide said I looked, “pale as a ghost.”

But this state of ridiculous semi-stupor lasted but for a moment. The slight twitch I felt as the fly slipped from the mouth of the fish operated like the sound of a trumpet. Every nerve tingled and the blood leaped through my veins as if every drop was an electric battery. In a very few moments, however, I was myself again. I had marked the spot where the fish had risen, had gathered up my line for another cast, had dropped the fly just where I desired it to rest, when, like a flash, the same enormous head appeared, the samejaws revealed themselves, a swirl and a leap and a strike followed, and my first salmon was hooked with a thud, which told me as plainly as if the operation had transpired within the range of my vision, that if I lost him it would be my own fault. When thus assured, there was excitement but no flurry. My nerves thrilled and every muscle assumed the tension of well tempered steel, but I realized the full sublimity of the occasion, and a sort of majestic calmness took the place of the stupid inaction which followed the first apparition. My untested rod bent under the pressure in a graceful curve; my reel clicked out a livelier melody than ever emanated from harp or hautboy as the astonished first made his first dash; the tensioned line emitted Aeolian music as it stretched and stiffened under the strain to which it was subjected; and for fifty minutes there was such giving and taking, such sulking and rushing, such leaping and tearing, such hoping and fearing, as would have “injected life into the ribs of death,” made an anchorite dance in very ecstacy, and caused any true angler to believe that his heart was a kettle drum, every sinew a jews harp, and the whole framework of his excited nerves a bull band of music. And during all this time my canoe rendered efficient service in keeping even pace with the eccentric movements of the struggling fish. “Hold him head up, if possible,” was the counsel given me, and “make him work for every inch of line.” Whether, therefore, he took fifty yards or a foot, I tried to make him pull for it, and then to regain whatever was taken as soon as possible. The result was in incessant clicking of the reel, either in paying out or in taking in, with an occasional flurry and leap which could have been no more prevented than the on-rushing of a locomotive. Any attempt to have suddenly checked him by making adequate resistance, would have made leader, line or rod a wreck in an instant.  All that it was proper or safe to do was to give to each just the amount of strain and pressure it could bear with safety—not an ounce more nor an ounce less; and I believe that I measured the pressure so exactly that the strain upon my rod did not vary half an ounce from the first to the last of the struggle.

Toward the close of the fight, when it was evident that the “jig was up” and I felt myself master of the situation, I took my stand upon a projecting point in the river, where the water was shallow and where the most favorable opportunity possible was afforded the gaffer to give the struggling fish the final death-thrust, and so end the battle. It was skillfully done. The first plunge of the gaff brought him to the green sward, and there lay out before me, in all his silver beauty and magnificent proportions, MY FIRST SALMON. He weighed thirty pounds, plump, measured nearly four feet in length, was killed in fifty minutes and afforded me more pleasure than any event since—well, say since Lee surrendered. As he was thus spread out before me, I could only stand over him in speechless admiration and delight—panting with fatigue, trembling in very ecstacy, and exclaiming with good old Sir Izaak: “As Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, ‘Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;’ and so, if I may judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

This victory was a surfeit for the morning. With other fish in full view, ready to give me a repetition of the grand sport I had already experienced, I made no other cast and retired perfectly contented. The beautiful fish was laid down lovingly in the bottom of the canoe and borne in triumph to camp, where fish and fisher were given such hearty welcome amid such hilarious enthusiasm as was befitting “the cause and the occasion.”

In the afternoon of the same day I killed a twenty-three pound salmon in the same pool in twenty minutes, having, I was sorry to learn on getting back to camp, monopolized the luck of the day, no other member of the party having had so much as a rise. But I was soon eclipsed, both in size and number—how, when, where, by whom, under what circumstance, and amid what intense excitement, I will try and describe anon.

CHAPTER X

A Few Note-Worth Incidents

Our camp was unusually picturesque,--a well preserved lawn separated from the river by a fringe of alders, backed by a few cultivated fields attached to the cottage in our immediate neighborhood, and surrounded by lofty mountains, densely covered from base to summit with spruce, hemlock, maple and birch. Our three white tents constituted a pleasant contrast to the green sward upon which they were pitched, and our dining hall and cook-house were models of adaptability and neatness. The taste displayed in their disposition was due, first, to the military experience of Col. Pell, and secondly, to the austere habits of system, order and neatness for which the deservedly popular Collector of the Port of New York is distinguished. A better arranged camp, combining more of good taste and comfort, never was erected upon any waters. My only objection to it was the fear that the recollection of it would hereafter render me dissatisfied with the straggling, disjointed, haphazard way in which I have always hitherto been content to camp out. A little sound judgement and good state goes a great way toward making even a fishing camp comfortable and attractive. I have often wondered how tidy wives could bear, with such angelic patience as some of them do, the careless ways of their slovenly husbands. If, as some insist, nothing more contributes to the happiness of a household than habitual neatness, there must be at least one very happy home in our great metropolis.

On the morning of our second day on the river, all hands were ready for work. The several pools were properly divided; each resorted to the one to which he was assigned, with high hopes and confident anticipations. And the result justified all that was hoped for. Gen. Arthur, as was proper, led in the score, although not in weight. Mr. Dun stood next; but Col. Pell had caught the champion fish. His first salmon weighted thirty-five pounds! It was a grand achievement, and he bore his honors and good luck with becoming meekness, although he had killed his fish in twenty minutes. This despatch indicated extraordinary skill in a novice. No expert could have done better. Indeed, it is not once in a hundred times that a thirty-five pound salmon is brought to gaff so promptly. I was content and happy with a single fish of twenty-four pounds as the result of my day’s labor.

Every new day brought new pleasures and an increase of fish; but not one caught more than five in any one day, and sometimes some one’s count was nil. But every day brought with it some special excitement or adventure, some new incident or experience to break the monotony of the camp, and to maintain the reputation of the sport as more attractive, inspiring and exciting than any other. Among them were these:

The General had been fishing with but passable success, when the monotony was broken by a leap which indicated greater weight and dimensions than anything with which he had yet been favored. With the promptness of an expert he struck at the right moment and with the exact force requisite to hook his fish strongly—a great art, which few salmon-anglers ever acquire perfectly. Then followed a struggle which justified his estimate of the weight of the fish. For more than an hour, every know appliance was used in vain to bring him to gaff. He sulked, plunged, leaped and rushed as impetuously at the end of the hour as during the first five minutes after he was hooked. He made no sign of surrender or weariness, and was in one of his worst tantrums when the reel clogged. Any one with less experience and persistency than the General would have “thrown up the sponge” at such a mishap; but he was equal to the emergency. The canoe was forced rapidly forward to the beach, which was fortunately unobstructed; the General leaped upon terra firma with the agility of an acrobat, and after an active backward and forward movement of half an hour, manipulating his line with his hand, he bagged his game, saved his tackling, and brought to camp a thirty-four pound salmon. Not one angler in a thousand would have achieved such a victory, and he deserved the congratulations he received when the magnificent fish was formally spread out for inspection.

And to this incident there is a moral. The reel which thus clogged at the most critical moment, was made with special reference to extra heavy work, was warranted as superior to any reel which had ever found its way upon salmon waters, and cost a fabulous sum of money. But it was a delusion and a cheat—as worthless as tow string for a salmon line and the cause of harsher words with more syllables than any reel that ever passed under my disgusted inspection. A reel that “ticks like a chronometer and moves like clock-work” is all very well in a show-case; but a reel with rough and ready action and straight-forward movements, like a man with “no nonsense about him,” is the reel for service. It was the last bit of work that fancy reel was called upon to do during our three weeks on the Cascapedia.

Another incident, equally exciting, but resulting less fortunately, happened to the General upon another occasion. He had solidly hooked a very large fish in a pool where large fish pre-eminently abound. He sulked persistently. For nearly an hour he remained as immovable as a rock. No strain which it was safe to impose upon the rod could move him. He simply wouldn’t stir. Nothing is more provoking, and nothing more tries the patience of the most patient angler. The fatigue is even greater than when hooked to a fish that deems “action, action, action,” quite as essential to liberty as the rhetorician declares the same qualities indispensable to effective oratory. The tension must be equally preserved, without a moment’s relaxation, whatever moods the fish may assume or whatever freaks may move him. To be obliged to stand an hour thus pulling upon an immovable object, until every muscle in one’s arms seems ready to come out in shreds, is about as wearisome a position as any angler can be placed in; and it would not be strange if, during some moments of this long tussle, he is inclined to the opinion that, after all, it may be true, as the cynic hath said, that angling is an exercise which requires a rod and line with a worm at one end and a fool at the other. But even such a struggle has its compensations, and every true angler would gladly bear even tenfold the fatigue involved in such labor rather than surrender one iota of the intensely pleasurable excitement he derives from it. But as there is an end to all things, so there is an end to a salmon’s sulks. When well nigh wary to exhaustion, and when almost ready to make the effort to force him from his hole if every inch of rod and tackle should be smashed in the effort, the patient angler found the fish rushing as determinedly as he before had sulked. More than two hundred feet of line went out of the reel in a flash; and it became now even harder to stop than it was before to start him. Rush followed rush in such quick succession that scarcely a yard of line remained in reserve. The only hope was in the equally rapid movement of the canoe. The boatmen were as eager and excited as the fisherman, and whatever muscle could accomplish was done. It was a race for life on one hand and for conquest on the other. In a moment the pool was left far back on the distance. Now one rapid and now another was passed. Shallows were avoided and rocks were shunned with a skill which was as marvelous as the wonderful strength and vitality of the fish. A full mile had been thus gone over with lightning-like velocity. The General had not for a moment lost either his head or his feet. The line was held with an even hand, and the signs indicated a speedy triumph of mind over matter, and skill over brute force, when (may stale fish be his diet for a fortnight!) of the men, by a wrong movement of his paddle, sent the canoe directly beneath an overhanging tree which compelled the General to lower the ip of his rod, of which the fish took instant advantage, snapped the leader and was off, leaving behind him a cascade of foam and followed by “a blue streak.” Such an issue of a hard fight is a terrible test of one’s patience, and when his leaderless line came back upon him, limp and empty as a stale joke, if the General had simply said, “Boys, go to camp,” he would have proved himself more than mortal. If he uttered any other sentence, the angel’s tear which fell upon the hastily spoken word of Uncle Toby, no doubt blotted out all that was superfluous and unseemly.

Other incidents of a like character were constantly  occurring. Indeed, the successful capture of a fish that rises to your fly is as frequently the exception as the rule. And this is not to be wondered at when it is remembered that the hook used is not larger than the smallest pin when curved. When the fish rises to this diminutive object, and the angler “strikes,” the chances are at least two to one that it will slip out of the huge jaws of the eager fish. And even when the hook catches some part of the exposed surface, it is quite as likely to catch where the fibre is tender as where it is tough. But if hooked just right, there is still the contingency of imperfect tackling, a misshapen hook, a brittle loop, a frayed leader, or a deceptive line; and superadded to all these, are the hidden rocks against which line or leader is often chafed up to the point of separation. With these and many other chances against the angler, the wonder is not that he often loses a fish, but that he succeeds in killing so many. And yet it is this uncertainty—these always possible and frequently occurring contingencies—which give to the science its greatest charm, and make success something of which to be proud.

Chapter XI

Salmon Habits and a Lost Battle

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. – [Old adage.

Notwithstanding our success, we are every day made conscious that we are too late for the best fishing. Some of the pools from which half a score of salmon could be taken in a day previous to the middle of July, are now barren of fish; and in many others, a day may be consumed in achieving what could then be accomplished in an hour. Salmon begin to run into fresh water early in June, or so soon as the Spring freshets are over; and then they show their greatest life and voracity. From that time on to the middle of July, they are most active and rise most readily to any object which attracts their attention. After that—when they have been a month or more in fresh water—they become somewhat sluggish and less disposed to rise. Besides, the water becomes so shallow and transparent that the very shadow of the line is distinctly visible; and no fish is more shy or more easily frightened. To take a salmon under these circumstances requires the exercise of the greatest patience, and to take them in any great numbers is proof of the highest skill. I would never advise any one who has to make a long journey to reach salmon waters to go later than the first of July, except on compulsion. Better fish in August than not fish at all, but you will be sure of a larger catch in one week toward the end of June than during a whole month after the fifteenth of July.

It is, however, no proof that there are no salmon in a pool because they do not rise. I have more than once cast all day in a pool alive with leaping salmon—above, below and all around me—without being able to lure one to my hook. This is one of the peculiarities of the fish I cannot fathom. My own experience is the experience of every one who has ever spent even a week upon a salmon river.

It is generally believed that salmon eat nothing after they enter fresh water; and their apparently empty stomachs when dissected are cited in proof of the theory. But if they eat nothing, and have no desire to do so, why do they rise to a living or artificial object? Why do they often even gorge the fly and rise to a minnow, or take a minnow or a fly when trolled under the surface, or when dropped as bait is ordinarily dropped in still fishing? The general absence of food from the stomach is seemingly conclusive of the total abstinence theory; but better believe anything marvelous or improbable than that a salmon lives through six months or any number of months of the year in a state of constant activity, and during the exhaustive process of generation, without imbibing any particle of food. It is just as improbable that it does so as it would be unnatural.

But I have neither the wish nor the knowledge requisite to enter upon an intelligent discussion of any of the habits or peculiarities of this fish. This is neither the purpose nor the intent of these rambling letters.

In my last I referred to some of the more noteworthy incidents which occurred to Gen. Arthur. Others had almost equally exciting experiences. None of our party had greater skill, or were made happy by greater success, than Mr. Dun. He kept even pace with the General, and often distanced myself. Of course I attributed this to his longer practice; it could have been nothing else! But while he had his successes he also had his mishaps. The most notable was this: He had hooked a very large fish at the camp-pool, which began the fight magnificently. I never saw a fish leap more spitefully or make more determined efforts to escape. But he managed so splendidly that at the end of an hour and a half all the lookers-on voted him sure to be bagged. Directly below the pool where he was struck, and to which he had been restricted, was a heavy rapids which the canoe-men were anxious, if possible, to avoid. They advised, therefore, rather than to allow the fish to shoot these rapids, that he should be, as gently as possible, coaxed over to a cove of deep water lying behind some large rocks above the rapids and near the middle of the pool. This advice was taken, and in effecting the change of base the fish gave a series of leaps which revealed the full dimensions of the largest salmon, by many pounds, I ever saw. When asked for an estimate of his weight, the Indian gaffer simply held up his paddle to indicate that that, in his opinion, was about his measure. The desired cove was securely reached. The fish changed his tactics from leaping to sulking, as they most generally do in deep, still water, and at the end of two full hours was seemingly as far from being a dead fish as at any moment during the struggle. Thinking he would be able to manage him better and hold him more comfortably on the rock than in the canoe, Mr. Dun made the transfer, sitting down as coolly and unflurried as if he were casting up the interest on a long note instead of fighting a hard battle with a forty-five pound salmon. I took my seat beside him, intensely interested in the contest, and endeavored to rest his weary muscles by congratulating him upon the grand sport he was having, and expressing my admiration of the splendid way in which he was handling his fish. But he shook his head doubtfully, and expressed his fears of the issue. “I don’t like,” he said, “the occasional feel of my line. It seems to me that the fellow is rubbing his nose against a rock, trying to chafe off my leader. There it goes again! I must get out of this or I shall lose him, sure.” The fight had been going on now for two hours and fifteen minutes by the watch, and Mr. D had just made his first step toward the canoe, when up came the broken leader, the sad memento of a lost battle! Just what he feared had happened, and what was undoubtedly the largest fish that had been hooked this season, “turned tail” upon his discomfited captor. And there was silence for the space of a minute. Fisher, gaffer and lookers-on were equally speechless. If any one was tempted to blaspheme, he evidently felt that “he had nothing in his vocabulary at all adequate to the occasion,” and said nothing. I had always admired the complacent serenity with which my poor friend had borne the crosses of life, but on this occasion his serenity touched the verge of the sublime. Happy man who can thus lose a (say) fifty-pound salmon without intermitting a single puff of his cigar! Many a saint has been canonized who never exhibited the angelic virtues of uncomplaining submission and gentle patience in such sublime measure.

Another mishap occurred in this wise: When I was fighting what afterwards proved to be a thirty-four pound fish (my largest), and just at a most critical moment, I found that my line had been crossed and “doubled under” on my reel. I could take in at pleasure, but I could not let out an inch. It was an awkward fix; but as good luck would have it, by risking an extra strain upon my rod I soon regained more line than was afterward called for, and saved my fish. The dilemma was the result of careless reeling. One cannot be too particular in seeing that his line is reeled up closely and without a lap. I lost a salmon before I learned this useful lesson.

These mishaps, however were but exceptions to the rule of good luck, although it is undoubtedly the experience of most salmon anglers that they miss a great many more fish that rise than they hook, and lose a great many more that are hooked than they kill. At least that was our experience. Enough, however, were killed, and of sufficient weight, to satisfy the ambition of the most ambitious in our party. On the General’s large score was marked one fish of forty odd pounds, and several others approximating that weight. Mr. Dun’s score fully equaled that of the General, and embraced one or more of the same weight, with several ranging from thirty pounds upward. Col. Pell, with a somewhat smaller score, approached the most successful of the party in weight. My first three fish weighted eighty-eight pounds (30, 24 and 34) and my three largest ninety-three pounds (34, 30 and 29); but my heaviest fist weighted only thirty-four pounds—several pounds less than the largest which honored the scores of Gen. Arthur and Mr. Dun, and less than the largest taken by Col. Pell. In June and early July better scores were made, and a few larger fish were taken—as high as forty-eight pounds—but I am sure no other party was ever better pleased with their achievements or more thoroughly enjoyed the sport.

Our trip to the Forks of the river, nearly fifty miles up stream, with a description of the grand scenery which met us at every step, the beautiful camp we erected and adorned, the grand rapids we ascended, the splendid fishing we had, our return flight through the rapids, with the thousand and one pleasant incidents that made very day too short and the breaking up of camp the only unhappy moment—all of these will form the theme of future chapters. I will only now say, on closing the record of my first year’s visit to the Cascapedia, that our trip up the river was marked by two unusual occurrences—the sight of a huge Black Bear, which abound in this region, and of a large Moose, which are here as thick as deer I the Adirondacks. The former was “loafing ‘round” on a pebbly beach, and the later was crossing the river, soon after sunrise, in the immediate neighborhood of our camp. All hands were routed out to see him, and the shootist of our party had the good fortune to—miss him, although within easy rifle range. But who could hit his first Moose before fairly awake? The monster was as large as a Jersey cow, with great spreading antlers, but he moved as sprightly as a grey-hound when he discovered his proximity to our camp.

It is a pleasure also to say that we remember gratefully the courtesies of Mr. Moffat, of Dalhousie, and the unceasing attentions of Mr. Montgomery, Collector of the Port, who made our day’s stay in the town one of unalloyed pleasure. Both gentlemen placed our party under lasting obligations, and their kindness and hospitality will always be associated with the pleasant memories we shall ever cherish of our first visit to these salmon waters.

            CHAPTER XII

Some Reminiscences of Old Friends.

Did ever any one see the like! What a heap of trumpery is here; and since I find you an honest man, I will make no scruples in laying my treasures before you. –[Charles Cotton.

On taking down my score of angling implements from their winter’s repose, I found them as I had left the, after a long siege of service. They were as welcome as the faces of old friends; and the older the more welcome.

There was the identical “silver doctor” with which I took my first salmon last year—dim and frayed from hard service, but more precious from association than all its score of gaudy companions. What any fly would do, under any circumstances, for any one, that fly did for me. Whether in sunshine or cloud—whether in untried waters or where each ripple, rock and eddy were as familiar as household words—whether, when no breeze disturbed the silvery surface of the river or when the storm howled all around me—always and in all places it was true to its office. We sometimes have such friends, and because some such have been brought to mind by this tiny memento of forest life, I will place it on the retired list, lest it should disappoint me should I again test it, and so the pleasant memories I have of it be dimmed by the recollection of a single failure. Even friendship may get weary, and he is wise who never overtasks it.

Here is another memento—a Limerick hook, which proved a faithful friend in all waters for many years. I took my first trout with it in 1853, from a mill-pond not far from Coburg in Canada. The water was as transparent as the atmosphere. I had whipped every inch of it in vain. Not a fish would rise to any fly I could muster. In despair I had resort to bait, and dropping my line into deep water within a few feet of a sunken brush-heap, I was startled on seeing coming out from beneath it, with a sedate and complacent gravity, a massive and graceful trout, evidently quite intent upon the tempting lure which I had placed before him. But he moved very slowly, as if confident that what his eye was fixed upon could not escape him; and as if, like an experienced epicure, he was determined to enjoy in anticipation the feast which he was sure of, he smacked his lips, as trout often do, and dashed at last for the bait. I struck him on the instant, but too soon. I knew he was badly hooked, and felt that to save him would require most careful handling. The bank upon which I stood was three or four feet above the water, and the water two yards from the bank was twenty feet in depth. After a struggle of ten minutes, I was that with the delicate hold I had of him it would be impossible either to kill or lift him, and having neither landing net nor gaff, James Wild—who as a looker-on was even more excited than myself—begged of me to lead the fish close to the bank, when he could, he thought, by taking the line near the hook, slide him out of the water in safety. I was afraid of the experiment and suggested my hat as a substitute for a landing net; but he, as he always is, was sanguine of success and I submitted. Never was fish led more delicately, and he followed my lead as kindly as a pet lamb, until I held him within three feet of Wild’s stand-point. Seizing the line, and poising himself with artistic precision, he slid the beautiful creature out of the water nearly to the top of the bank, when the hook was disengaged, and, with a single shake of his tail, as if in defiance, he plunged back into his native element, and I after him! Seeing that the momentum which W. gave him was not sufficient to save him, I instinctively threw myself forward to scoop him up, but failed, and found myself the next instant coming up myself through the pure water into which I had plunged in my fruitless efforts to save the fish! Wild never moved a muscle, but pointing to a spot a few rods distant, quietly suggested to me to “swim yonder’ it’s a good place to get out at!” He has never offered to land a fish for me from that day to this.

I have other pleasant recollections of this Limerick. Trees have been climbed, books have been forded, and stout garments have been cut, to preserve it; and here it is to-day, good as new and ready for instant service. I shall preserve it as an heir-loom, and it shall go down to posterity with my “silver doctor” certified, under my hand and seal, as a friend who never failed me.

And here is a Reel, with every movement out of gear and quite as unfit for service as a broken rod. And yet I would as soon think of burning the letters of an old friend as to throw it away; for I never look at it without having come up before me a thousand pleasant reminiscences of angling waters in the Canadas, in Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and the lakes and rivers which make an angler’s paradise of our own northern forests. It rendered its first service in the waters of the Chateaugay lakes—once famous as the best trout waters on our northern border. This was so long since that it is like a sprinkling snow-flakes upon my frosted locks to think of it. My companions were James Cook, Alfred Clark and Duncan Pell. They have all crossed the dark river; but the recollection of their virtues and good fellowship remains as a pleasant memory. During that excursion I remember that Gen. Cook wagered Mr. Pell that a three-pound-and-a-quarter brook trout I had taken in the inlet could not be beaten. As Mr. Pell had just captured one which weighed five pounds and a quarter, the General lost the wager. Both fish, within twenty-four hours, were served up as the crowning dish of a sumptuous dinner given to a select party of friends by Hamilton Fish, then the chief executive of the State as he is now the honored head of the Washington cabinet. It is rare indeed that two such brook trout are ever taken from any of the rivers in our own State. They are common in the Rangely waters, but nowhere else within our own territory this side the Rocky Mountains. 

And this “leader” has its history. I bought it in Montreal, years ago, when I found myself too late for a pleasure trip to the Saguenay for salmon. Falling in with an expert, he proposed that we should try the streams intersecting the railroad between Montreal and Portland. The suggestion was an agreeable one, and we were soon pushing our way from Island Pond to a famous brook and lake some five miles distant. The day was intensely hot, and we despaired of success unless we should have the luck to strike a “spring-hole.” This, after hours of seeking, we failed to find in the brook; and the lake (whose shores were composed of mud and quick-sand) gave no better promise. But as the sun-glare began to pass from the face of the water, trout were observed to “break” in a narrow circle a few rods distant. There was the “spring-hole” we were seeking. But how to reach it! A log-raft was speedily extemporised, and we had our reward. My “leader” was strung with five flies, and in six casts I killed eighteen trout, weighing nineteen pounds and a half.

CHAPTERS XIII-XIV

Skipped – not of general interest

CHAPTER XV.

In Camp—The Indian Gaffer—The Advantages of Preserved Waters

Here, or in some such devoted solitude, should dwell the Muse and compose a treatise on the worship of the Dryads.—Thoreau

Blessed silent groves! O may you be

Forever mirth’s best nursery!

May pure contents

Forever pitch their tents

Upon these downs, these meeds, these rocks, these mountains,

And peace still slumber by the purling fountains,

                Which we may every year

                Meet, when we come a-fishing here.

                --Sir Henry Wotton

Our first camping ground was twelve miles from the mouth of the river and combined all the elements of picturesqueness and grandeur—a verdant plain encircled by lofty mountains, only broken by a cleft of sufficient breadth to give egress to the crystal river, whose leaping waters filled our camp with perpetual melody. We reached it, as last year, by canoes which awaited our coming, and of which we instantly availed ourselves to reach our coveted Mecca. I was greatly pleased to find that my last year’s guides were again at my service. I wished no better, and I was flattered by their salutation and their assurance that they wished to render service to no more patient angler. No one of the party had reason to murmur at the men assigned him. All seemed equally expert with paddle and setting pole, and all, with a single exception, could gaff his fish at the right moment and with mathematical precision. If they occasionally missed, and, by a false stroke, lost their prize, it is only what sometimes happens to the best and wisest in every department of life. What a “raree show” for an admiring world would that man be who had never blundered! Of some of the mistakes made in gaffing, and of the effect of these mistakes upon the mild-tempered gentlemen who were the victims of them, I shall have something to say hereafter—only remarking  now, in passing, that skill in gaffing is considered the highest accomplishment of an Indian guide. I have seen feats of skill by gaffers which were marvelous in their lightening-like rapidity and magical dexterity. The Indian is at no time so wholly an Indian as when, with flashing eye and distended nostril—with every nerve strung for the work before him, and with attitude as fixed and immovable as a marble statue—he is awaiting his opportunity to gaff his fish. It is the pose of the eagle awaiting the auspicious moment to dash upon his selected victim; the crouching of the lion ready to leap upon his prey. No angler’s gallery is perfect without a picture of an Indian gaffer thus ready to strike.

Each canoe has two guides. Both are necessary to propel the frail craft over the impetuous rapids which are met with in every salmon river; and they are equally necessary in guiding the canoe down the rapids, which are generally boiling cauldrons, full of rocks and whirlpools and treacherous currents. Running, as these rapids often do, ten or fifteen miles an hour, contact with a rock is full of peril. But this seldom happens. I remember but a single instance, and that was the result of overloading rather than the lack of skill or judgment in the canoemen.

Two hours of steady pulling brought us to our camp, where we found several fishers who had been awaiting our coming to strike their tents and leave the river. They had had good sport, but not equal to that of last year. Why? was a question they were unable to answer. Most likely because they came to late to meet the first run of fish, which were believed to have passed up at the full of the spring freshet, when successful angling is not deemed practicable, and when even tidewater fishing with nets is seldom attempted. This theory was partially confirmed by the fact that those who had gone to the upper pools had no cause of complaint. Ordinarily, the best time to whip” a river is when the first spring freshet is subsiding. Then the fish are fresh from the sea and far more eager and muscular than after a long sojourn in fresh water. Except upon compulsion, no one should defer his visit to a salmon river later than the middle of June. On a good river there will be tolerable fishing until the middle of August, but the cream of the sport is only available on this river from the tenth of June to the fourth of July. It was not our luck, either last year or this, to be able to choose our time. We hope, however, to do so on some future occasion. We shall then know whether it is possible to experience any higher pleasure, or to achieve any grander successes, than have rendered memorable our two visits to the Cascapedia.

As is the manner of all true anglers, our unknown friends gave us a most hearty welcome. Their spacious board was loaded with every coveted delicacy, freshly caught and artistically cooked salmon constituting, of course, the chief and most palatable dish. And salmon only reveal their unapproachable delicacy when thus served. If the fastidious gourmand is rendered happy by such stale specimens of the delicious fish as he has served up to him a thousand miles from where they are caught, into what spasms of ecstacy would he be thrown by partaking of the delicate morsel while the golden flakes still retain their full and luscious flavor! Such golden flakes melted upon our palates on this pleasant occasion; and if no sparkling wines were brought forward to crown the feast, we found a better substitute in an abundant supply of excellent coffee, far more delicious to our taste than would have been the fabled “nectar of the gods.”

After a hasty adieu and a whole volume of good wishes, we were left temporary “monarchs of all we surveyed,” and, with two beside—Captain Grant, of England, and Mr. Kinear, of St. John—the sole occupants of fifty miles of as splendid salmon waters as ever received the fly of a jolly angler.

Camp-life in pleasant weather on trout stream or salmon river, with agreeable companions and passable sport is, to the angler, the very perfection of enjoyment. He covets nothing so much as these periodical respites from rasping care and social conventionalities. They are full of sunshine in their realization, and they remain a pleasant memory forever.

Our first camping ground was all that heart could wish—a charming valley, encircled by an amphitheatre of mountains, wood-clad to their very summit, with the river, transparent as the atmosphere, moving in graceful undulations to the sea. It took but a few hours to pitch our tents, to extemporise a dining hall and kitchen, and to settle down to the solid comfort and enjoyment coveted by those whose simple tastes lead them to these quiet places.

There are, popularly, erroneous ideas entertained of the comforts or discomforts of camp-life. These ideas have been for the most part derived from the real or imaginary pictures painted by novices in wood-craft. One may be quite as comfortable in a bark or log shanty or under a canvas tent as in a well appointed hostelry. It only requires a knowledge of what is essential to comfort and the experience necessary to apply this knowledge practically. To “rough it” does not necessarily imply wet feet, damp clothing, a hard bed, insufficient covering, a leaky tent, hard tack and stale bacon. These are all available to those who prefer them, and the chances are ten to one that you will have them all until you learn that none of them are either necessary or desirable. If you cannot procure what I have found to be unprocurable (water-proof leather boots), a pair of thick rubber shoes, for wet days and damp places, will keep your feet dry. With a rubber coat and leggings, except in a drenching tempest, you need wear no damp clothing. A piece of heavy canvas, withseams through which to pass your extemporised stretchers, will give you a spring bed, which, with aromatic balsam boughs for a mattress and plenty of blankets to keep you warm, makes as comfortable a couch as you can buy of the upholsterer. A leaky tent or shanty is an unnecessary nuisance; while, by using a little forethought, your cuisine may be as palatable and healthful as any epicure could desire. It all depends upon one’s own skill and knowledge, and these, like all wisdom, are only acquired by experience.

Nor to attain these comforts is it necessary to render yourself ridiculous by transporting a cartload of luggage. A large sack, which any one can shoulder, will hold you’re A or wall-tent, your bedding and all your rough garments. A hand valise is sufficient for your “store clothes.” Two or three moderate sized packages will cover your necessary provender for an ordinary trip, and your tackling is easy portable. A Saratoga trunk on trout-stream or salmon river is as conclusive as a sonorous bray that a donkey is in the neighborhood. Yet these are sometimes seen, ordinarily accompanied by a biped decked off in long boots, velvet pants and jacket, a jaunty hat bedizened with gaudy flies, and a body belt ornamented with bowie knife and pistol, as if he expected at every turn to encounter herds of wild cats or panthers, or a whole tribe of blood-thirsty Indians anxious for his precious scalp. All anglers in their wanderings have encountered such comical specimens of cockney sportsmen. They are generally harmless, however, catching but few fish and killing too little game to materially affect the supply.

It is the attractive feature of these preserved waters that they can only be fished by those holding official permits to do so. In stating for a pool, your anticipations of sport are not disturbed by the apprehension that it may have already been seized and held by some “earlier bird” than yourself. It is all you, to make the most of how and when you please. This conscious security comports with the leisurely habits of the true angler, and prevents those feelings of envy, strife and jealousy which are too often excited when one finds a favorite bit of water swept by a bevy of bait-fishers and lashed into foam by their whip-cord lines and heavy sinkers swung out from “larraping rods” huge enough to lift a leviathan. Here you pay for what you have, and you are sure to have what you pay for. No sly departures! No lying awake all night to “steal the march” of your neighbors in the morning! No studied deception! No unseemly racing to get ahead of  “the other fellows!” Your assigned pool waits for you, whether the fish do or not; and you cast without haste or fear of disturbance, as the honored guest takes his ease in his inn. How many weary miles I have paddled and tramped among the Adirondacks to get out of the reach of the huge army of “Murray’s fools,” who for a time swarmed that angler’s paradise, with mo more appreciation of the art, or of the delectable recreation of angling than a donkey has of the heavenly harmonies. I owe to them, however, the pleasant recollection of many weeks of delightful solitude and repose amid pathless woods and unfrequented lakes and streamlets. SO I forgive them—glad, nevertheless, to be able, here, upon the far-off Cascapedia, to fish undisturbed, and to feast upon the magnificent scenery which every where meets the eye and gladdens the spirit, without fear of molestation from cockney intruders. This assured isolation during the hours set apart for angling constitutes one of the chief charms of these preserved waters. “Yet” (as that most lovable lover of nature, Thoreau, says) “I would not insist upon any one’s trying it who has not a pretty good supply of internal sunshine; otherwise he would have, I judge, to spend too much time in fighting with his dark humors. To live alone comfortably, we must have that self-comfort which rays out of nature—a portion of it at least.”

Forest solitudes, away off upon and beyond the verge of civilization, have an irresistible fascination. To be alone become a passion with some men. There are to-day, as there have been in all the past, hundreds of hunters and trappers in the wilderness of the west who cannot endure contact with their fellow men, and are only happy when remote from all human habitations. But this exaggerated love of isolation—of perpetual separation from their kinds—is no proof of intellectual superiority or of an exalted appreciation of the beauty and grandeur of nature uncontaminated by the depravities and meannesses of a selfish civilization. Moral or esthetic considerations seldom enter the minds of these “mighty hunters.” Their hermit-life is simply proof of a morbid and distorted condition of mind, which is neither to be commended, admired nor imitated. It would be as untruthful and as unjust to associate the angler who seeks, temporarily, for repose and recreation, the solitudes of the forest, with these uncouth, unkempt and unlettered trappers, as it would be to proclaim all angling debasing because professional “pot-hunters,” who are alike indifferent to times and seasons and the processes by which they achieve results, engage in it.

Nor must it be inferred that isolation is the fixed status of the angler. At proper times and seasons in no class of men is the social element more fully developed. To have this demonstrated it is only necessary to visit the camp-fire after the sports of the day are over. John Wilson’s “Noctes Ambrosiana” and “Dies Borealis,” are no mere fictions. His unapproachable dialogues have their counterpart under many other canvas in our primitive forests. They may not always be marked by the profound philosophy, rollicking humor, tender pathos, or glowing imagery which have given the recorded sayings of these eminent anglers a foremost place among the classics of the century. But they are kindred in tone and spirit, and often approach them in all the good qualities which will render them the delight of all thoughtful men of all ages.

It is the recollection of these social re-unions, participated in by men of kindred tastes and sympathies, who have sought these far-off solitudes to be happy in their own simple way, quite as much as the strike and struggle of the gamey salmon, which makes the memory of these seasons of recreation and repose “a joy forever.” Those who do not find it so have not yet imbibed the spirit of the Fathers, nor attained unto the highest possibilities of the gentle art.

Chapter XVI

A Pleasant Morning – The Judge’s First Salmon

‘Neath cloistered boughs each flora bell that swingeth,

   And tolls its perfume on the passing air,

Makes Sabbath in the field, and ever righeth,

   A call to prayer.

                                    --Horace Smith

Give me mine angle. We’ll to the river; there,

My music playing afar off, I will betray

Tawny finn’d fishers; my bended hook shall pierce

Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up,

I’ll think them every one an Antony,

And say, “Ah, ha! You’re caught.”

                                    --Shakspeare

Our first morning in camp was cloudless and serene. The “callar mountain air” was pure and bracing.  The gentle western breeze came down from the hills freighted with the perfume of a million flowers and the melody of a thousand songsters, calling up the beautiful apostrophe of the psalmist: “Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion; I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help; my help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” The leaves, besprinkled with “the dew of the morning,” sparkled like diamonds in the sunlight, while the river murmured out its perpetual anthem as it moved along its cleft pathway to the sea. Here and there, on the high-up summits of the hills which encircled the beautiful valley in which we had pitched our tents, the morning mist, transparent as a bridal veil, hung in mid-air like a benediction, while every forst tree and flowering shrub swayed to and fro like a waving censer before the grand altar of nature.

And in due time, as if to fill up the measure of our devout gratitude to a kind Providence for having permitted us to “cast our lines in such pleasant places,” there came up from the camp-fire the odor of broiled salmon, mingled with the aroma of slowly distilling Mocha, whetting the already keen appetite for the morning meal in rapid preparation. And when served, “there was silence for the space of half an hour,” when the Judge held up his crutch in speechless thanksgiving for such a luscious repast amid such gorgeous surroundings.

The first business in order was the allotment of pools. There are three within easy distance of the camp. Each usually affords ample sport, but one of them is more coveted than the others because it uniformly abounds in larger fish. As the Judge had never taken a salmon, this pool was awarded him by unanimous assent—a striking illustration of the self-sacrificing courtesy which distinguishes all true disciples of the gentle art. For, be it understood, it is no mean proof of the magnanimity to voluntarily surrender to another the best place to fish. It requires more grace than to give up a “sure thing” in Wall street. This latter sacrifice goes no deeper than the pocket; the former touches the core of your highest enjoyment. Whoever makes this sacrifice has the spirit of the good Samaritan. All anglers may not be thus magnanimous, and those who are do not always find their magnanimity appreciated. But such is the experience of all doers of good deeds. Charitable men, and men of kindly sympathies, are as often accused of ostentation as commended for benevolence. No matter if they do try to “do good by stealth and blush to find it fame,” there are critics who will pronounce their modest hypocrisy, and their blushes the flush of anger that their charities are not proclaimed from the house-top. Not so the Judge. He appreciated the well-meant compliment, and gave due expression to the feeling of gratitude which this “offering of friendship” excited in his “manly bosom.”

            The issue of this little bit of courtesy was much more satisfactory than a similar instance of piscatorial self-sacrifice which I remember. It occurred in the “North Woods,” on one of the inlets which connect the Fulton chain of lakes. I was having excellent sport; almost every cast met with a response, and my creel was becoming unpleasantly weighty with its precious burden. Just as I had reached the margin of a favorite pool from which I had never failed to beguile a half dozen large fish, I observed in the near distance a clever fellow who was passionately fond of the sport, but who, having no skill, had no “luck.” “I don’t understand it,” was his stereotyped bewailment. And just here was his trouble; he did not “understand it.” He persisted in whipping the stream with a line of four-fold the proper dimensions, and seeing my opportunity to do him a favor, I invited him to take my place at the pool into which I was about to cast. Although this happened twenty years ago I have not to this day been quite able to decide whether (remembering the sequel) I did a generous or a foolish thing in thus surrendering my prerogative to one who, however grateful, proved himself illy qualified to make the best possible use of his opportunity. His huge sinker fell into the water with a splash, carrying with it a number-nine hook covered with a full half ounce of wriggling worms, when it was at once seized by a three-pound trout, which in another instant was dangling from the limb of a neighboring tree into which he had been elevated by the excited angler. And there he hung for twenty minutes from an inextricably tangled line, which was only recovered, with what depended from it, after such turbulence as to render any further angling in that pool impracticable for the day. But in spite of his awkwardness he saved his trout, was made happy for his success, and overwhelmed me with thanks for my courtesy.

The Judge may not have been more grateful, but he entered upon his work with more grace and skill. His first casts were made with becoming caution, as if feeling his way for thejoints in the harness of a crafty witness. He was too wise an angler to drop his fly into the centre of the pool abruptly. Like a wary General, he worked his way to the heart of the citadel by “gradual approaches.” A novice would have charged him with undue timidity, just as impatient lookers on sometimes accused him of irrelevancy when cautiously drawing the net of his irresistible logic around his bewildered victim in the witness box during that famous Brooklyn combat of intellectual giants. He knew what he was about then; he knows what he is about now. He was too wise a lawyer to thwart himself by inordinate haste; and he is too skillful an angler to hazard success by undue precipitancy. Foot by foot his casts were lengthened and swept gracefully across the current of the pool. Foot by foot he worked his way to the objective point, where rested what he coveted more than the verdict of judge or jury. And now, at last, the fly drops gently upon the glistening surface of the dark water, just at the point desired, when there followed a rush and strike, and a momentary pause, as if fish and fisher were alike astounded, and then click, whiz, whir-r-r went the reel, as if harnessed to a lightning train with a thunderbolt for a locomotive. Away went the fish with two hundred feet of line, but stopping at that distance as suddenly as if arrested by a peremptory order of the court. Then came the tug of war; first to hold him—that required muscle; then to bear with him while he sulked—that required patience. The Judge had both, and both were brought into skilful requisition. For ten minutes not a fin stirred; but the taut line, as it resisted the combined pressure of the current and the fish, thrummed like an Aeolian harp, and made every nerve tingle with delight. As became the watchful angler that he is, the eyes of the Judge were immovably fixed upon his line as it stretched out straight before him. He believed the fish near the opposite bank in a direct line with his rod, and he was looking intently for some sign of life from the spot where he supposed his fish was sulking, when click! Click! whiz-z-z, again went the reel, and a huge fish leaped his whole length out of water a hundred feet above him. “Hello,” said the Judge, “there’s another fellow!” “No, that’s your fish,” said the Indian gaffer. “Blazes! You don’t say? What’s he doing there? He’s not within a hundred feet of my line.” “It’s your fish, sir. The swift current makes your line bend like the new moon.” And this was the fact; but the illusion was so perfect that it required several like experiences to convince him that his Indian gaffer was not “fooling him” upon that occasion.

After an hour’s struggle, and with a skill and judgment which excited the admiration of all who witnessed the contest, the fish was killed and captured. When he kicked the beam at the twenty eight pound notch, the Judge was a proud and a happy man. There are many things he will forget as old Time weaves silver threads amid his auburn locks, but he will never forget his astonishment when that fished showed himself one hundred feet from the point where he was intently watching him.

The next day Dun was awarded the Judge’s pool and had his usual luck—making a larger score than any of us, and breaking more rods; not because he had less general skill, but because he could not receive a challenge from a fish without returning an impetuous “strike” on the instant. One may “strike” too soon as well as too late. In angling, as in everything else, there is a “happy mean”—just the right mode and moment to strike your fish without imperiling your tackling or tearing the hook from his mouth. To invariably compass this right moment requires steadier nerve, greater forbearance and a nicer appreciation of time and opportunity than falls to the lot of most anglers. A few have the gift; but it only comes to old trout fishers after much practice and many discomfitures.

Our friend had been casting half an hour at “a gay gambolier” whose special vocation seemed to be to leap at nothing and keep just a tail’s breadth from the lure sent to him. His disportings proved his agility but were provokingly tantalizing; and Dun was just ready to give him up as “a hopeless case,” when he made a dash for the fly and was astonished to find himself hooked. With a rush and a leap which eclipsed all his previous demonstrations, he started for the opposite shore as if in a hurry to deliver some message he had forgotten. It was just the last place in the neighborhood of the pool one cared to have his fish take to, for it was full of jagged rocks and bowlders. Aware of this, Dun instantly did his best to bring him back intowater. But after a few desperate tugs, he was compelled, for the time, to give up the effort and permit him to sulk—preserving, however, a taut line, measured with mathematical nicety, upon the stubborn brute.  Salmon will sometimes sulk thus for hours, in seeming disregard and contempt of any pressure you dare bring upon them. For more than thirty minutes Dun sat

      “Like Patience on a monument, smiling at Grief.”

when he deemed it high time to assume the aggressive. So he ordered his canoemen to paddle cautiously toward the “objective point,” while he reeled up his two hundred feet of taut line until every muscle ached with the pressure. He had reached within fifty feet of his leader, but not a tail wagged; thirty feet, but nothing was felt but the steady tension of the quivering line; ten feet, the same. All was as still and motionless as the old granite bowlder which looked down upon the dark waters amid whose eddying currents leader and fly were hidden from vision. Angler and gaffer were alike perplexed. So near a fish and no sign of life! Nothing like it had passed the annals of angling. “Slide your paddle down cautiously and start him,” said Dun. Down slid the paddle, but nothing came of it. “Try again; but take care that he doesn’t rush under the canoe.” Down again went the paddle, when, mystery of mysteries! it struck, not a salmon, but the rock around which the salmon had twisted the leader, broken loose from the fly and so escaped, a wiser if not a better fish, quite prepared to resume his game of leap-frog long before his disappointed captor could reel in the fifty ton bowlder at which head been tugging lustily for more than thirty minutes!

Our conversation in camp was of rather a frivolous character that evening. We were afraid to introduce any weighty subject lest our friend should interpret it as a personal reflection!

Chapter XVII

Difference in Fish – Gaffing Salmon – The Reel-Click

  Doubt not, sir, but that Angling is an art, and an art worth your learning; the question is, rather, whether you be capable of learning it. – Sir Izaak Walton

In one sense, all salmon, like all men, are alike; but like all men, also, they are very unlike in behavior under given circumstances. I once brought a fifteen-pound salmon to gaff in ten minutes, and I have had a two hours’ struggle with others of no greater weight; just as some men succumb when so much as a shadow of adversity crosses their pathway, while others fight on so long as a peg remains to hand a hop upon. The former are the negatives of the race, only useful in swelling the numerals of a census table. The latter not only “conquer fate” by their pluck and energy, but are the architects of towns, cities, states and empires. It is only when “Greek meets Greek” that there “comes the tug of war,” and it is only when the angler strikes a fighting salmon that he properly appreciates their muscular energy and great endurance.

It is not always possible to give a reason for the difference in the play of different fish of the same species.  Every one has his theory. One says it is in the sex. Another, that it depends upon their recent or remote advent into fresh water, and others upon where the fish is hooked. It is undoubtedly true that, as a rule, there is more game in the male than in the female salmon, and that fish fresh from the ocean are the most muscular and ferocious. But I have had equal sport with fish of either sex, and have found as tough customers fifty miles from the sea as in close proximity to it. The difference, I fancy, depends upon how and where they are hooked. A barb through the tongue of a salmon is like a curb on the jaws of a horse; he may have the disposition to run, but he doesn’t fancy the unpleasant sensation which follows his attempt to do so. Another reason is, the seeming dull perception of some fish. Like some men, it takes them a good while to get over their astonishment at finding something wrong, and before they really comprehend the situation, they lose their advantage and are gaffed.

I had a very interesting illustration of this one day. I was fishing at a point where counter currents met, and where, consequently, it was difficult to keep out a straight line without constant casting. Becoming weary with this sort of perpetual motion, I allowed my line to slacken and my fly to perambulate at its own sweet will. While they were thus floating in a circle, the fly out of sight, I felt a slight tug and began to reel up leisurely, annoyed that my lure had, as I supposed, been taken by a trout. Every movement, for half a minute, seemed to confirm this impression, and I had stopped reeling to give expression to my disappointment, when the fish started in gallant salmon style, leaped his full length out of water, and gave me all I could do for three hours and twenty minutes before he was brought to gaff, and then he was only struck by a chance blow as he was rushing, in full life, past my canoe in swift water. What I supposed, at first, to be merely a two or three-pound trout proved to be a twenty-seven-pound salmon.  If I had been in shoal water when I first reeled him up to within twenty feet of my canoe, I might have ended his career in ten minutes. The hook had struck him at some callous point, and he followed the gentle lead I gave him without sense of pain or danger, and only made a dash when he saw the canoe with its threatening surroundings.

In gaffing this fish while on the run in swift water, my Indian guide proved himself an expert in the most difficult department of the art. The expression of my surprise and admiration made him a happy Indi8an. He knew he had done something which deserved commendation, and it pleased him to find that it was observed. In our every day life we are too sparing of our compliments. When any one within the circle of our acquaintance does well—whether hod-carrier or Senator, crossing-sweeper or orator—it does no harm to let him know that his well-doing is recognized and appreciated. Judicious commendation is a more potent stimulant than we are apt to think. But for it, many who have come to excel in their several vocations would have grown up into the merest mediocrity, while for lack of it, multitudes have ceased to struggle, because they have received no token that heir aspirations were approved. A good word, where deserved, costs nothing, but it is often magical in its effects. My simple “Bravo! no Indian  on the Cascapedia could have done better,” was more to my guide than the plaudits of the multitude to the orator on the rostrum. I never afterward lost a fish from want of diligence on the part of my gaffer.

But others did. Dun had hooked a very large fish and had fought him bravely for two hours – bringing him frequently within the reach of his gaffer, and as frequently was obliged to give him line to prevent him from breaking off in his fright when foully struck at. Finally the gaffer reached him, struck out wildly, scratched the fish and snapped the leader! The silence which followed was a grand exhibition of fortitude and forbearance. It may have been that my friend could fin no words suitable to the occasion; but I preferred to attribute the Christian-like grace with which he succumbed to the inevitable, to the possession of that rare virtue commended by the Scripture: “Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” That gaffer gaffed no more for Dun.

A like misfortune happened to General Arthur not long afterward, under even more provoking circumstances. He had hooked his fish, played him with consummate skill and brought him several times to the very feet of his gaffer—the last time seemingly a dead fish and into water not twelve inches deep. But a spell seemed to be on the poor Indian. He struck once, twice, thrice, without effect—except upon the leader, which he broke. But even then the fish did not stir, neither did the gaffer. The fish seemed bewildered, as the gaffer certainly was, until the General quietly intimated that as the fish was waiting to be gaffed it would be well to gratify him; when the Indian seemed to comprehend the situation, and proceeded to do what, I he had attempted two seconds sooner, would have been a success. But before the gaff fell where the fish was he wasn’t there, and thirty-five pounds of as fine salmon as ever wagged a tail floated off with the current, in all probability to die “unwept, unhonored and unsung.” Expletives, like notes in music, are modulated to meet the intensity of the emotions. The General’s expletive was pitched on the upper register, and the gaffer would have been pitched into the Cascapedia if he hadn’t looked as if that was just what he expected. The explanation was that the water was not deep enough to permit the gaff-hook to go under the fish. The consequence was it glanced along its side and back, struck the leader, which it broke, and gave the fish free rein. And yet this mishap occurred to one of the most skillful and careful gaffers on the river. The poor fellow hung his head for a week, but it was the last fish he lost.

If it requires skill to always gaff a fish, it requires equal skill to always properly respond to a fish which leaps while the angler is playing him. TO elevate your rod as the fish leaps, and to hold it at the attained elevation as he goes down, is to almost inevitably lose him. All that is necessary to be done at this supremely exciting moment, is to let the tip of the rod descend with the fish. You thus prevent the strain and snap which must otherwise ensue. This movement of the rod at the right instant, under such circumstances, is the most difficult lesson to learn in the whole art of angling. No incident in the sport is more exciting than these salmon leaps. If you do not then preserve your wits you will most certainly lose your salmon. The lesson I learned in maple pool (of which anon) in this direction, was a lesson I had to learn sooner or later; but the recollection of it will be a grief forever.

What the long-roll is to the soldier the reel-click is to the angler. It is the call to battle and stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet.

No salmon ever takes the hook when alarmed. He may come to it with a rush, but with his motion so exactly graduated as to have but little momentum after the lure is reached—like a jumper making for the goal.  The result is that on the very instant of striking the reel seldom gives out more than a click or two, unless the angler strikes simultaneously—which most anglers do; whether wisely or not, is a problem yet unsolved by the master of the art. The moment, however, the fish feels the sting of the hook he shoots off with a rush, causing, by his rapid movement, the whiz and whir-r which, to the angler, is the most thrilling music that ever falls upon his ear. The deliberate click, click, which succeeds the strikes, is the measured prelude to the grand chorus which follows when the astonished fish enters upon his mad career. These sounds alternate through the protracted struggle; now a single click, as the fish shakes his head in his sulking moments, and now a whiz and whir-r-r, as he rushes and leaps in his desperate efforts to free himself from the stinging barb which holds him. When a determined fish is thus hooked, the same stirring music is repeated a hundred times, until, finally, the poor fellow is only able to give spasmodic tugs, moving the line but the length of a single cog, the reel responding by slow and measured clicks like the tap of a muffled drum beating

      “Funeral marches to the grave.”

But these death-tugs are full of peril. More fish “tear out” then than at any other moment in the struggle. To prevent such a catastrophe requires the most watchful and delicate manipulation.  Safety lies in a cautious easing off of the pressure on the line with every movement of the fish, being careful, however, that no slack is allowed to render his vicious wrench effective and fatal. To see an angler at the moment when a mammoth salmon thus escapes—his road at the perpendicular, his line dangling loosely in the breeze, his mount wide and his muscles limp as a seaweed—is to see a comical embodiment of disgust, astonishment and despair. His bewailment and self-upbraidings find expression in the unspoken thought: “With a little more care how different ‘it might have been.’” All salmon fishers have passed through this experience and understand it. No others can, however graphically described. Did not the poet have this picture in his mind when he wrote:

    Then she took up he burden of life again,

    Saying only: “It might have been.”

    God pity them both and pity us all

    Who vainly the dreams of our youth recall;

    For of all the sad words of tongue or pen,

    The saddest are these: “It might have been.”

There is but one sound in nature, animate or inanimate, which at all resembles the whir of a reel when in full play—the rattling trill of a kingfisher when on the wing. It is a singular coincidence that the must of the best angler known to ornithology finds its most perfect counterpart in that which man finds indispensable to his successful pursuit of a pastime that constitutes its life-long vocation. This bird most abounds on swift-running waters. They are in great numbers on the Cascapedia, and more than once my reel and this feathered angler have joined in a duet, to my great amusement and delight. They were in as perfect accord as if brought into concert pitch by the hand of the same master.

CHAPTER XVIII

Trout Fishing—Do Fish Hear? – A Merry Making

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning. –[Sir Izaak Walton

Salmon fishing is confessedly the highest department in the school of angling. With very rare exceptions, the tact and skill necessary for its successful practices is only acquired by long experience in the minor branches of the art, first, in early youth, with bait, for chub, perch and sunfish; next, in the transition state, with troll, for bass, pickerel and muscalonge; and lastly, when the mind takes in the exciting realities and poetic possibilities of the art, with fly, in streamlet, river and lake. It is not until after all is attained that is attainable in trout waters that salmon are sighed for, and only very few who thus sigh are ever able to have their longings gratified. But those whose experience has been limited to bait or troll seldom aspire to anything beyond the pleasant amusement which their primitive modes of angling afford them. Having never cast a fly they have no conception of the superiority of that mode of angling over all others, and so soon weary of a pastime which, from its sameness and tameness, fails to attract when something more than mere muscular exercise or physical excitement is required to hold its votaries. A gray-haired bait-fisher is very rare, while the passion for fly-casting, whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it feeds upon, and continues a source of the highest pleasure even after the grasshopper becomes a burden. But this is not strange; for there is as much difference between these extremes of the art as there is between the harsh music of a hurdy-gurdy and the divine harmony of the violin.

There is, however, a similarity between trout and salmon fishing that pleasure can be found in either by the expert in both. And as trout usually abound in salmon waters, they are often fished for as a rest from the heavy work involved in the capture of salmon.

Judge Fullerton had been familiar with trout streams from his youth up. There are few brooks or rivers where trout “most do congregate,” from Maine to New Brunswick, in which he has not “slain his thousands.” I was not surprised, therefore, to find him very early hankering after a day’s hunt for trout. Nor was I any more surprised to find him returning to camp long before half the day was over, with thirty-five pounds of splendid fish, ranging from half a pound to three pounds in weight. Subsequently he met with even greater success—once taking forty-five pounds during a short afternoon. As an experiment, I myself caught sixteen large trout in thirty minutes, with an eight-ounce rod, without a landing net. It was unsportsmanlike sport. My only excuse was to see what could be done in these waters; and as the fish could all be put to good use, there was no waste and consequently no upbraidings of conscience.

The trout in the Cascapedia, and, indeed, in all these salmon rivers, are mostly sea trout, running up the rivers every season, like salmon, to spawn. When they leave the salt water, their spots have scarcely the slightest tinge of crimson. Later, they assume a somewhat brighter hue; but they never attain the beautiful brilliancy of the brook-trout in our home streams. Nor, as a rule, do they rise as sprightly to the fly. Indeed, like salmon, they usually strike without projecting themselves so much as their head’s length above the surface. But they are strong, and as they run much larger than the average brook-trout in any of our home waters (save, perhaps, the Rangely lakes), they afford splendid play, and often draw the angler away from the more kingly but far more laborious sport which salmon afford.

There are in these water brook as well as sea-trout, but they are found mostly in or near the mouths of the small streams emptying into the main river. When we coveted a meal of them, ranging from two to four ounces, we knew just where to find them, and, what is equally important, just how to crisp them. There may be a more delicious dish than small brook-trout properly cooked, just as there may be a more delicious fruit than the strawberry, but the fact has not yet passed into the annals of modern discovery.

It may not be out of place nor uninteresting to some of my readers to say, while I think of it, that I took some pains to gather the opinions of our Indian guides on the mooted question, “Do fish hear?” To my surprise I found that there was but one opinion—the negative of the question. And a great many facts were given in support of this opinion, much to my satisfaction, as I have for a long time been fully satisfied that all fish are “deaf as adders.”

This question was amusingly discussed the other day. Having arranged to change camp, we requested one of the baggage canoe-guides, who moved off a day in advance of us, to mark two or three spots which he knew to be good casting places, that we might try them as we came to them. We soon found a cedar slab stuck up on which was written in charcoal:

“Fish Hear!”

The occupant of the first canoe which came along, not caring to make the experiment, and seeing his opportunity for a play upon words, added:

“Do Fish Hear?”

When the third canoe came up, the contents of the placard were read to the Indian, and his opinion asked. Looking round for signs of fish, he quietly exclaimed:

“Ugh Fish not Hear!”

Although what was intended for a very different purpose had resulted in a novel discussion of a mooted question, it was decided that the very “bad spell” had reached a very wise conclusion.

For two weeks we were in daily telegraphic correspondence with Gen. Arthur, whose illness obliged him to return home after he had accompanied us as far as Bangor on our way hither. The character of his illness (which subsequently developed into a malignant carbuncle) rendered us uneasy, and our anxiety could only be appeased by these daily bulletins. A fatal termination of the malady was only avoided, under Providence, by careful home nursing and the best medical attendance, aided by a strong constitution and indomitable will. The announcement of his hopeful convalescence was a pleasant piece of news, and when word came that he had “started for the Cascapedia,” the Judge was eloquent in the expression of his gratitude and pleasure. But when on delightful Saturday morning he was seen in the distance snugly ensconced midships of his canoe, there was great joy in camp and preparations were made to give him a fitting welcome.

The Shedden pool, directly in front of the camp, had been left unfished for two days that he might enjoy it at its best. And it never “panned out” more richly than during the first afternoon he fished it. In five hours he landed four salmon, besides losing one through the stupidity of his gaffer, after a two hours’ fight. They averaged twenty-seven pounds, the largest weighing thirty-pounds. With the capture of his first fish the last vestige of his illness left him. There is no medicine equal to the rise, strike and struggle of a thirty-pound salmon to bring back lost vigor to an appreciative convalescent.

The advent of the General among us was celebrated by the guides in the evening by a dance. This was rendered possible, in due form, from the fact that one of the Indians was a violinist, and had his instrument with him. The lady of the neighboring farm-house kindly proffered her best room, and her three daughters were quite willing to join in the merry-making. It was a pleasant reunion, marked by all the decorum, with a thousand-fold the vivacity usually exhibited by the “first families” under like circumstances. The violinist was not a Paganini, but he kept perfect time with both elbow and heels. The Indians were very lively dancers, and the young ladies, by the ease and homely grace with which, in their tunic-like costumes, they followed the lead of their partners, gave evidence of long practice. If none of “the gentlemen” (as the guests were politely designated) “tripped the light, fantastic toe,” it was from no discourtesy. The measured steps practiced in the salons of  “society,” compared with the hearty movements of these lusty dancers, would have been as monotonous as the dull thud of a muffled drum compared with the rattling thunder of a ponderous trip-hammer.

The dancing was interspersed with vocal music. Two of the young ladies sang, in duet, with exquisite taste and expression, that beautiful Scotch ballad, “I maun gang awa’, lassie;” and the General, not to be outdone in courtesy, recited Burns’ “Tam o’Shanter” and “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” in a most admirable manner, to the great delight of the Scotch matron of the household and “ithers o’ that ilk” who were present. The Judge also delighted every one by his good-humored rendering of that classically pathetic ballad, “Sam Jones, the fisherman,” while Dun brought tears to the eyes of his susceptible audience by artistically chanting that profoundly plaintive ditty:

“On Springfield mountains there did dwell,

A comely youth I knew full well,”—

which “comely youth,” it may be remembered, having been cruelly jilted, wandered off broken-hearted to die ignominiously from the bite of “a pesky serpent.”

In reportorial parlance, “nothing occurred to mar the festivities of the occasion,” and all retired at an early hour the happier for having participated in the innocent hilarity of the evening.