The Lure of the Rainbow 1 1 5 



I was told by expert fly-casters who have fished all the 

 streams of the country, that this region and its surrounding 

 rivers and streams represent the finest large rainbow-trout 

 angling in the world, and I do not dispute it. I am not an 

 expert fly-caster, only a lucky sea angler ashore; but if 

 I should be asked to name the real attraction of Peli- 

 can and its little rivers, I should reply, not the big trout, 

 which readily respond to the fly; not the splendid for- 

 est and its game; not the lakes and seas of azure which 

 float in mighty craters literally in the air, but the passing 

 of the day on lake and cliff; the racing sapphire shad- 

 ows that every evening lured and held us on the crystal 

 streams. 



All of the little rivers which flow into the head of Upper 

 Klamath rise in splendid springs of icy water and afiford 

 good fly fishing. One, Williamson, called by its devotees the 

 most beautiful trout stream in the world, has many famous 

 pools, as Spring Creek, Crystal Creek. Here one can cast 

 from the bank or from a boat, and have as a boatman a 

 genial native whose father was a Portuguese, his mother of 

 Irish lineage. The good boatman married a Modoc squaw 

 and has a large growing family whose strain should com- 

 mend them to the traveling ethnologist. Not far away is 

 Ana Canon, of many charms; a knife-like abyss reaching 

 away from the big crater, abounding in thick forests and 

 clustering trees which overhung the winding musical trout 

 stream, an enticing little river that lures one on and on, 

 into its throbbing heart. 



Anglers are not all alike, and there are some men con- 

 scientious on other subjects, who desire the limit every day. 

 These sylvan streams are not for them; they would be dis- 

 appointed; the waters appear to be designed for Walton- 

 ians, to whom the actual catch is but an incident in the day. 

 I observed that many anglers here were quite content with 

 the mere casting along the charming, indeed ideal, shores, 

 when the fish were not rising, and were well satisfied to 



