CAaE's SPRTNa-IIOIiE. — MY "BIG TROUT." 249 



mother kisses her sleephig- iufaut. Instantly a half-ponnder 

 sprang liercely at the flies. I nervouslj^ struck so hard 

 that, alas! my rod broke. Fish, flies, leader and line went 

 whizzing away. Seizing the slender fragment of my rod 

 in one hand, and manipulating the line with the other, I 

 succeeded in landing the fish. The rod was a ncAV one, 

 liilhcrlo untried, and a, i)(>()r Imtt Jiad succumbed. Untan- 

 gling the snarl, I speedily took and rigged my old rod, tried 

 in man}" a tussle with bass as well as trout, — a rod that once 

 took twelve bass in five casts, — and was ready again. 



Quietly landing upon the point between the streams, with 

 open ground behind me, again I launched the leader and 

 line out over the water; and as the flies settled down, up 

 leaped the trout, two and three at a time. Nearly every 

 cast for a few exciting moments, — they might have been 

 many or few so far as my observation recorded them — 

 brought to basket one or two fish. Finally, tiring of quar- 

 ter and half-pounders, I put in practice somebody's old 

 precept that " for big fish use large flies." 



Searching In my fly-book, I found an outrageously large 

 red - and - white - winged, purple - bodied and tinsel-wound 

 bass-fly, and attached it to the end of my leader, and cast. 

 Julius Ctesar! What a rise! I couldn't help it,— I knew 

 well enough .it wasn't "good fishing," — but I struck as 

 if I had been shot, and sent the fly forty feet behind me 

 in a flash. "Gently, gently!" said I to my beating heart 

 and tingling nerves; and then, with trembling expectancy 

 but with all my skill, laid the big fly right amidst the bub- 

 bles left by the mad leap and roll. Again the open jaws 



