310 The American Angter 
Mr. Ralph Lowe, of San Jose, and with- 
out exceptions, he made the greatest 
fight I saw during my visit to the lake. 
Captain Burton, our host at the inn, al- 
so informed me that the greatest strug- 
gle he ever had with a fish on the lake, 
was with one of our brook trout. 
Onthe road from Webber to Truckee, 
there runs a goodly brook called Sage 
Hen, well stocked with our pretty 
S. fontinalis. If the unbeliever will 
take his light rod and spend a day 
there with them, his prejudices will 
doubtless flow gently with the ripplin 
waters down stream. 
Having heard wonderful stories of 
the fishing on the Williamson river in 
oC 
oD 
Oregon, I determined to pay it a visit. 
I promised to keep an accurate record 
of all the fish I took there, that some 
reliable data might exist. The pro- 
verbal fish story usually admits of a con- 
siderable divisor ; but as I am too old 
at the gentle craft to have any desire to 
deceive either myself or others, I have 
simply adhered to the cold facts in the 
matter of count, and the weights were 
taken accurately by scale, not by the 
eye or guess-work so frequently. em- 
ployed in estimating the size of fish. 
The Williamson river finds its source 
in the great Klamath marshes, some forty 
square miles in extent, flowing south 
where it joins the Sprague river, and 
empties into the Upper Klamath lake, a 
large body of water some thirty miles 
long by fifteen miles in width. This 
lake, through a very narrow water way, 
finds an exodus into Lower Klamath 
lake, a considerably smaller body, and 
then empties into the Klamath river 
through which it flows to the sea. 
The river is entirely on the Klamath 
_Indian reservation, and a permit is re- 
quired to gothere. After some eighteen 
hours travel by rail to Ager, in Cali- 
fornia, one finds conveyance for the 
ninety miles’ ride over perhaps the wors 
road on the slope, to reach the stream. 
While I was in California the regular 
stage had been held up three or four 
times, and Wells, Fargo & Co.’s express 
had ceased using it for about a month 
previous to my visit. 
We, however, passed the Topsy 
Grade, where the masked gentleman so 
persistently entertained travelers, in 
safety, and had the various rocks and 
trees pointed out from behind which he 
demanded a little conversation and a 
holding up of hands, and perhaps even 
something more. 
As we preferred to travel by daylight, 
it took three days to get in, and on the 
evening of the third we arrived at Chil- 
liken’s bridge on the Williamson, a short 
distance above its junction with the 
Sprague. George Chilliken, after whom 
the bridge is named, was a Klamath In- 
dian, whose services as a guide into the 
Lava Beds contributed greatly toward 
the eventual defeat of the savages in 
the Modoc war, the scene of which 
lies not more than sixty miles south. 
From his widow, a large, powerful and 
handsome squaw, we hired the small 
shack in which they formerly lived 
with their two bright boys. Unloading 
our stores, we soon had our cook and 
camp keeper, whom we had brought 
with us, putting things in shape. 
Rigging a 7% oz. Leonard rod, I be- 
took me to the stream to get a fish for 
the evening meal. I soon had seven 
in my creel, running from 34 to 1% Ib. 
in weight, which I forthwith handed 
over to the cook. 
This little experience induced me to 
increase the divisor on the stories of 
the whales of the Williamson, and I 
concluded that a 7% oz. rod would fill 
all requirements, and the heavy 10% 
ry 
are ee 
