188 WILD LIFE AND THE CAMERA 



pool. Again and again was this repeated, and each 

 time I carefully threw him. It was a great fight, 

 and after five minutes, which seemed more like 

 fifty, he was brought to the net. Just four pounds 

 he weighed, and as I laid him in the creel and gazed 

 on his spotted, iridescent beauty, I congratulated 

 myself on having caught my first rainbow trout. 



To the man who would feel again that blessed, 

 boyish thrill, that tingling of the nerves, that 

 breathless expectancy that restores lost youth in a 

 twinkling, I would recommend such fishing as 

 this. I will not go into a detailed account of how 

 each fish was caught, for the reader would not be 

 interested ; such details are well enough when 

 bottled up in one's own mind, but they should be 

 kept there, and not allowed to escape to the 

 annoyance of a good-natured public. The man 

 who, sitting before the fireside, when fishing is 

 being discussed, monopolises conversation by the 

 hour, while he painfully recites with minutest 

 detail the catching of every fish on each of his 

 many trips, is a man to be avoided. So, not wish- 

 ing to be put in his class, I will simply state that the 

 fishing in the Kern River proved in every way up to 

 my expectations ; for the most part the conditions 

 were favourable to the sport, and the fishing was 

 sufficiently difficult to be always interesting. Never 

 once would the fish come too easily. Careful work 

 was nearly always needed, and even then no 

 ridiculously large catches would be made. Six to 

 ten good-size fish would be a very good day's work ; 

 of these only one or two would be kept for food, 

 the rest released in the water for future needs. 



