ii 4 THE FINE ART OF FISHING 



read the entire article of which only a small part is here 

 quoted. 



;< 'Now, den, just give two, tree cast in de cunal 

 first,' said Peter the Dane. 



"It was half-past five of a June morning June by 

 the calendar, early April by the cold blast that swept 

 down out of the north across the lake. Peter had put 

 together the stiff five-and-a-half ounce bamboo, care- 

 fully soaked out a six-foot single leader, and rigged up 

 a cast of a Jock Scott and a professor on number five 

 Sproat hooks. On the reel were seventy-five yards of 

 waterproof silk line, size E, as the rod had plenty of 

 backbone and casting in such a wind needed all the 

 helps possible. 



"I stepped up to the canal, a thirty-foot runway 

 from the lake which once fed the abandoned saw-mill, 

 and cast down the gently eddying stream. When I had 

 gotten out thirty or forty feet of line, working the flies 

 lightly across the surface as they swung with the cur- 

 rent, Peter grunted approval. 



' 'I gass you do ahl right. We go out in de cunoe.* 



"I may not have mentioned the fact that Peter is a 

 guide of unusual intelligence; his knowledge of lures 

 and of the baffling habits of the Salmonidae is unex- 

 celled; nor is his horizon, by any means, bounded by 

 fish. We stepped simultaneously into the canoe and 

 into an atmosphere of good fellowship. 



"A few strokes of the paddle sent us out to the line 

 of triangular log cribs marking the hundred-yard limit 

 above the dam, within which only fly-fishing is per- 

 mitted; and, tying up to a buoy in eight or ten feet 



