270 CKUISINGS IN THE CASCADES 



Trout grow to prodigious sizes in the Bitter Root, 

 as well as in several other streams in Montana, 

 Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington Territory. The 

 Indians frequently spear them through the ice, or 

 take them in nets, some of these weighing ten to 

 twelve pounds each. But these large ones rarely 

 rise to the fly. However, Colonel Gibson, of the 

 U. S. A., commanding at Fort Missoula, took one 

 on a fly that weighed nine pounds and two ounces, 

 and other instances have been recorded in which 

 they have been taken by this method nearly as large. 

 They have frequently been taken on live bait, and 

 have been known to attack a small trout that had 

 been hooked on a fly, before he could be landed. 



While I was hunting in the Bitter Eoot Mount- 

 ains in the fall of '83, a carpenter, who was building 

 a bridge across the Bitter Root, near Corvallis, con- 

 ceived the idea of fishing for trout with a set hook. 

 He rigged a heavy hook and line, baiting with a live 

 minnow, tied it to a willow that overhung one of the 

 deep pools, and left it over night. By this means 

 he secured three of these monster trout in a week, 

 that weighed from nine to eleven and a half pounds 

 each. 



The supply of trout in the Bitter Root seems 

 to be almost unlimited, for it has been fished 

 extensively for ten years past, and yet a man may 

 catch twenty -five to fifty pounds a day any time 

 during the season, and is almost sure to do so if he 

 is at all skillful or "lucky." I know a native 

 Bitter Rooter who, during the summer and fall of 

 '84, fished for the market, and averaged thirty 

 pounds a day all through the season, which he sold 



