214 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



trout had carried it in his jaws till the fraud was 

 detected, and then spat it out. He came a second 

 time and made a grand commotion in the water, but 

 not in my nerves, for I was ready then, hut failed 

 to take the fly, and so to get his weight and beauty 

 in these pages. As my luck failed me at the last, 

 I will place my loss at the full extent of the law, 

 and claim that nothing less than a ten-pounder was 

 spirited away from my hand that day. I might not 

 have saved him, netless as I was upon my cumbrous 

 raft; but I should at least have had the glory of the 

 fight, and the consolation of the fairly vanquished. 



These trout are not properly lake trout, but the 

 common brook trout. The largest ones are taken 

 with live bait through the ice in winter. The In- 

 dians and the habitans bring them out of the wood 

 from here and from Snow Lake, on their toboggans, 

 from two and a half to three feet long. They have 

 kinks and ways of their own. About half a mile 

 above camp we discovered a deep oval bay to one 

 side the main current of the river, that evidently 

 abounded in big fish. Here they disported them- 

 selves. It was a favorite feeding ground, and late 

 every afternoon the fish rose all about it, making 

 those big ripples the angler delights to see. A trout, 

 when he comes to the surface, starts a ring about his 

 own length in diameter; most of the rings in the 

 pool, when the eye caught them, were like barrel 

 hoops, but the haughty trout ignored all our best 

 efforts; not one rise did we get. We were told of 

 this pool on our return to Quebec, and that other 



