278 CRUISINGS IN. THE CASCADES 



fishing in the many years long gone, I never enjoyed 

 any more intensely, never had grander sport than in 

 these two days on Big Spring creek. 



It has been stated that the mountain trout lacks 

 the game qualities of our Eastern brook trout. I 

 have not found it so. They are quite as gamy, as 

 vicious in their fighting, and as destructive to fine 

 tackle as the brook trout, the only perceptible dif- 

 ference being that they do not fight so long. They 

 yield, however, only after a stubborn resistance, 

 sufficiently prolonged to challenge the admiration 

 of any angler. I have caught a number of two and 

 three pounders that required very careful and 

 patient handling for twenty to thirty minutes 

 before they could be brought to the landing net. 



There are various other streams along the line of 

 the Northern Pacific Kailroad which afford almost 

 equally as fine sport as the Bitter Root, and some 

 of them that are even more picturesque and beauti- 

 ful. In fact, nearly every stream reached by the 

 road, between Billings and Puget Sound, teems with 

 these graceful beauties. By leaving the road at 

 almost any point on the Rocky Mountain or Pend 

 d'Orielle Divisions and pushing back into the 

 mountains twenty to one hundred miles, the enter- 

 prising angler may find streams whose banks have 

 seldom been profaned by the foot of a white man; 

 where an artificial fly has seldom or never fallen 

 upon the sparkling blue waters, and yet where mill- 

 ions of these beautiful creatures swarm, ready to 

 rush upon anything that reaches the surface of 

 their element bearing the least resemblance to their 

 natural food, with all the fearless enthusiasm of 



