24 TROUT LORE 



beautiful silvery white, of unbelievable and un- 

 imagined brilliance. Strange to say, when I 

 reached home at night I could not pick out that 

 fish from the rest: its wonderful coloring had 

 faded absolutely. But I am fully persuaded 

 that was not a dream. 



Given a one-pound fish, nine times out of ten 

 an experienced angler can tell within one minute 

 after it is hooked whether it is a char or a true 

 trout. There is no question in my mind but 

 that the introduced fish, the salmon, is in all game 

 points the peer of the native char. There is a 

 dash, a "go," about the former not possessed by 

 the latter. One sometimes reads of a speckled 

 trout leaping from the water when hooked, 

 dancing on its tail, etc. an absolute falsehood I 

 believe. I have been a careful trout fisher for 

 twenty-five years and I have yet to see my first 

 speckled trout leap from the water on a slack 

 line; true, the angler can jerk them from the 

 water by main strength even a bullhead when 

 it comes to that but the char will never go into 

 the air of "his own free will. Upon the other 

 hand, hook a salmon trout, German brown or 

 rainbow, and almost the first thing the fish does 

 is to leap free of the water. Not only once does 

 the true salmon trout go into the air, but two, 



