SALMON AND TROUT MEMORIES 



menced fishing in the first good pool near the ranch. The 

 weather was turning cold — the month was October — and the 

 fish were somewhat sluggish it appeared. But in course of 

 time I rose a fish, obviously a trout ; then hooked something 

 strong and lively, and played for five minutes or more, and 

 finally landed a beautiful 5-lb. rainbow-trout, a perfect picture 

 of a fish in shape and colour. 



A day or two after the capture of my first rainbow-trout, 

 I learnt that there were heavy fish in the Platte. Jim Deacon, 

 the factotum at the Pick Ranch, had somewhere picked up an 

 old " Jock Scott " salmon-fly with a length of gut attached, 

 and pressed me to try it in a deep pool under the cliffs about 

 a mile above the ranch, and below an old dam, which had 

 originally been built for the purpose of supplying water to an 

 irrigating ditch. 



I thought the fly too large, but Jim insisted that heavy 

 fish had been caught higher up the river on similar flies, and 

 so I took the first opportunity of trying it in the cliff pool. 

 The result was that half-way down the stream I felt a draw, 

 raised my hand, and the next moment my little cane trout- 

 rod was bent double, while a heavy fish, playing like a salmon, 

 ran up and down the pool. I never saw him, and presently 

 the old gut-cast parted. But I felt satisfied that this was a 

 considerably heavier fish than anything I had yet hooked. 



My next experience of rainbow-trout was in the Mississippi 

 Valley. I had been staying for a week on a business visit in 

 the large western town of Minneapolis, situated on the banks 

 of the Mississippi River. A blazing August sun made the 



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