Another Week on the Nantahahx. 



215 



Man - Afraid - of - the - Water, ' ' who has 

 been an excited witness of the battle, 

 becomes frantic and swears I will fool 

 with him until he will get away, but I 

 keep a taut line and soon he shows 

 signs of departing strength, and I 

 gently lead him up to the head of the 

 pool, when " Young-Man- Afraid-of-the- 

 Water, " after three or four wild 

 .attempts, puts the landing net under 

 him and insists on carrying him forty 

 or fifty feet out on the bar, lest he may 

 get away. A few thumps on the head 

 with thumb and finger, a sickening 

 quiver, a gasping breath, and one of 

 God's most beautiful creations is wrapt 

 in death, and I, his murderer, stand 

 beside his bier unmoved. He is cer- 

 tainly " a thing of beaut}^, " but I doubt 

 if I shall ever be able to see him in the 

 light of "a joy forever." And all 

 this time, " Yoimg-Man-Afraid-of-the- 

 Water " stood by with a flask of six- 

 year-old Moonshine, suggestively pro- 

 truding from his hip pocket, silent and 

 dumb as an oyster, lost in admiration, 

 let us hope, and it was not until we had 

 covered a half mile or more of the 

 stream, while seated on a boulder a-mid- 

 stream, resting, and I had hinted at 

 some of the things I would have done 

 had lie landed an eleven and a half inch 

 fish, that he produced the flask wath a 

 hearty, "Brother, let's take a drink," 

 and w^e did just what you would have 

 done, brother angler, drank a bumper. 

 I was pleased to notice this time, that a 

 new^ order of things had taken root, 

 which if persisted in, will do much 

 towards protecting these w^aters. The 

 land owners along the river have 

 awakened to the necessity of posting 

 it, W'hile the non-fishing residents and 

 the hotels pay the market fishermen 

 fifteen cents a pound for trout, instead 

 of a cent apiece, as formerly. 



As the fingerling no longer repre- 

 sents the same commercial value as his 

 companions of older growth, his 

 chances of being returned to the 

 stream to grow into trouthood are 

 materially enhanced. 



These buyers of trout have builded 

 better than they thought, in thus 

 having brought about a certain degree 

 of protedtion to the fingerling, that 

 would not result from years of appeal- 

 ing to that, which the average market 

 fisherman, whether clad in purple and 

 fine linen, or dressed in homespun, 

 does not possess — the twan sentiment, 

 sport and recreation. 



Certain members of our party seemed 

 to get untold comfort and satisfa(5lion 

 in contending that the art of fly casting 

 is no doubt beautiful and artistic in 

 theory, but that it took the bait fisher- 

 man to get the trout. 



For their information, and, I trust, 

 their higher education, I want to assert 

 right here, that in the play and landing 

 of my eleven and a half inch trout, I 

 had more genuine sport than comes to 

 the bait trout fisherman in a life time, 

 and that, had fish been the sole object 

 of the trip, I could have resorted to 

 bait and held my own with their best 

 native fishermen. Will men ever learn 

 that it is not all of fishing to catch fish ? 



Whether I shall again wet a line in 

 the crystal waters of the beautiful 

 Nantahala, the future will tell. This 

 much, ho>vever, I do know: I shall 

 ahvays realize that my angling experi- 

 ence is incomplete until I shall have 

 fished this stream with the wind, 

 weather and water just right, and the 

 fish on the feed. Under these condi- 

 tions, I believe the possibilities of the 

 stream all but immeasurable. It is, 

 without doubt, an ideal home for the 

 brook beauties. It would seem that 



