CHAPTER III 



A GOLDEN DAY ON FORDING RIVER 



A Bath in the Sulphur Spring — A Ride to Fording River — Cut-Throat 

 Trout galore — Josephine Falls — Evening over the Elk Valley. 



Reader, did you ever have a day of ideal trout-fishing, 

 in a rushing mountain stream? I hope you have, for if 

 so it leaves that much less to desire. It is good to have 

 one fling at a fine thing, even though the day and the 

 hour never return. 



In Elk River, below the Sulphur Spring there is no 

 extra-fine fishing, for the reason that the accessibility of 

 the stream has caused the biggest fish to disappear via 

 the short line. So Charlie Smith planned that we should 

 make a trip for trout over to Fording River, partly, as 

 he phrased it, " to break the director in gradually, before 

 we get into the high mountains." In New York I 

 hunted long for rubber-bodied may-flies, and I carried 

 a rod and reel twenty-five hundred miles for one day on 

 Fording River; but that day was worth it! 



When we made camp on the ridge, the wind was 

 easterly, and there poured across that meadow, and up 

 over the ridge, a wave of sulphuretted hydrogen that 

 plainly told us we had arrived at the Sulphur Spring. 



Forthwith Mr. Phillips bade me prepare to bathe. 



