Trout- Fishing East versus West 



FROM north-eastern Utah to Lake Rossignol, 

 Nova Scotia, is a long cast, but it did not seem 

 so far in the spring of 1902 when I unpacked my 

 fishing tackle, with its odour of Rocky Mountain trout 

 " hanging 'round it still," to throw a fly for the first 

 time into a real Acadian trout stream. The fall before 

 I had been fishing, and incidentally copper-mining, 

 in the Rockies. Fishing, and incidentally gold-mining, 

 had brought me to Nova Scotia. 



My first morning's angling in the Kejimkujik River, 

 a couple of miles upstream from Lake Rossignol, was 

 an eye-opener. It happened to be just the right season, 

 an ideal day, and exactly the right hour for fly-fishing. 

 The water literally teemed with fish. It was one of 

 those favourable combinations of season, weather, 

 water, and eager trout that an angler is blessed with but 

 few times in his life. I caught singles, doubles, and 

 triples. In something less than an hour I had the 

 limit twenty fish. And such fish ! The smallest 

 weighed nine ounces, the largest three pounds six ounces, 

 and the majority were all big ones. Tom, my guide 

 (requiescat in pace /), seemed interested, though not 

 the least excited, and was quite firm about me catching 

 no more that day. Convinced that I could load the 

 canoe, I was eager to keep right on fishing while the 

 going was good. Tom quietly persisted, however, and 

 explained to me that the law said twenty a day was the 

 limit, and, besides, they would spoil on our hands if we 

 killed more. 



