23 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



and more than once awoke with the fancy that every hair 

 on my head was a massassauga, and the rustling of the 

 leaves the seductive music of their blood-curdling rattle. 

 Fond as I was of fishing, before morning I had resolved 

 that I wouldn't spend another such night for all the grayling 

 in the Au Sable. But 'how use doth breed a habit in a man!' 

 With the dawn my nervousness took flight, and through all 

 the subsequent nights I spent upon the river, I 'slept the 

 sleep of unconscious innocence.' Still, the knowledge that 

 rattlers are occasionally seen has made me less anxious than 

 I might otherwise be to go after grayling. 



"It is one of tLe glories of the 'North Woods' that they 

 are infested by no venomous reptiles; and during all the 

 years I have visited salmon rivers, I have never seen nor 

 heard of anything of kin to the rattlesnake family. I know 

 of some splendid trout, bass and muscalonge waters north- 

 west from Ottawa which 1 have hesitated about visiting be- 

 cause of their bad reputation in this respect. But even this 

 will not restrain me thiough another summer, if my health is 

 spared." 



"When are grayling in season?" I was asked. 



"The grayling is a spring spawner, and is in season any- 

 where from July to mid-winter. They are, perhaps, in full- 

 est life and flavor in September and October, and thus fur- 

 nish sport to the angler after it is wrong to take trout or 

 salmon. In Michigan there is no more delightful month in 

 the whole year than October. As a rule, it is an unbroken 

 Indian summer, and as, late in the month, deer are in good 

 flesh and are almost as plenty in the woods as grayling are 

 in the water, a combination of the two makes the Au Sable 

 region a very paradise to the sportsman. I may add, also, 

 that there are lakes near by quite as well stocked with bass 

 as the river is with grayling. A region where bass, grayling 

 and deer are all 'in season' at once, and all equally abun- 

 dant, should have a potent drawing power for all who take 

 delight in the use of rod and rifle." 



"Please take us with you the next time you go for gray- 

 ling/' was the expressed wish of all present not excepting 



