FISHINCx IN THE BLUE EARTH RIVER. 



BY I. S. DODD. 



The Blue Earth Valley, so-called, is 

 one of the choicest farming regions in 

 the great state of Minnesota. It is not 

 really a valley, but a magnificent roll- 

 ing prairie whose water courses drain 

 into the Blue Earth river. To-day it is 

 covered with as fine farms as you could 

 wish to see, but when I first knew it, 

 twenty years ago, it was different. The 

 country was then new, the farms few, 

 their buildings mere sheds, the only 

 crop, wheat, and the towns were ambi- 

 tious little cities, full of queer char- 

 acters. 



Save the few cows and horses ab- 

 solutely necessary, the farmers kept no 

 stock in those days. They used to 

 thresh their grain in the fields, and 

 burn 'their straw to get rid of it ; and 

 after threshing was over, for weeks the 

 nights would be lighted up by flaming 

 straw stacks, often with prairie fires to 

 fill up the intervals. 



All over the prairie here and there 

 were "sloughs" — marshes, we should 

 call them — some of them only a few 

 yards across, others miles in extent. 

 These sloughs, though marshy and 

 fringed with a dense growth of tall 

 grass and reeds, were not stagnant 

 swamps. They were really prairie- 

 springs and water-courses. The most 

 of them are now drained and dried up. 

 But, in those old days, they were the 

 homes of myriads of wild fowl. Pass- 

 ing by on an autumn evening, you 

 would hear a very Babel of discordant 

 clamor of ducks and geese, trying to 

 settle themselves for the night. Prairie 

 chickens, too, were abundant on all the 

 uplands, and in the timber along the 

 river were pigeons, partridges, and 



rabbits without number. A man did 

 not need to be a crack-shot or a mil- 

 lionaire to keep his table supplied with 

 choicest game in the season. 



But it is of the fishing I meant to 

 write, especially that in the Blue Earth 

 river. No one seems to know why that 

 pretty stream bears such a ghoulish 

 name. Certainly the earth along its 

 banks is not blue. It is a true prairie 

 river, narrow and tortuous, but tre- 

 mendously long for its size. It is 

 good clear water, little rifts and shal- 

 lows alternating with long still deep 

 stretches, the bottom generally grav- 

 elly, with here and there a boulder, 

 but no rock. 



Indeed, there is no rock at all in that 

 prairie country, and on the uplands a 

 stone as big as a marble is a curiosity. 

 The river flows, like most of the prairie 

 streams, through a deep "bottom" or 

 valley, which is well timbered, and with 

 the exception of a few fine groves 

 about some of the lakes, is the only 

 natural woodland in the region. 



About a mile and a-half from the 

 "city" where I lived, there was a mill- 

 dam across the river. There I took 

 my first lessons in fly-fishing. My 

 game was black bass. I had a fly-rod, 

 a gift from a friend at the East. It 

 makes me smile now when I think of 

 that rod. It was ash and lancewood, 

 mostly ash, four-jointed, at least twelve 

 feet long, and I don't know how heavy, 

 I had a few bass flies, a three-foot 

 twisted leader, strong enough for a 

 tarpon, and a cheap brass reel with a 

 common linen line. I used to hang 

 three — sometimes four — flies on that 

 short cable of a leader. But this out- 



