A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre 



8 9 



There were no deep pools, yet this radiant creature 

 played his game with a skill that was marvellous. In he 

 came on the reel, bending the split bamboo to the dan- 

 ger point, then breaking away in the riffle, bounding on 

 slack line into the air a foot or more, shaking himself 

 like a black bass, landing almost in the shallows to shoot 

 into midstream in so gallant a rush that I was forced 

 ahead, and led down through the green where he 

 plunged into a little cascade, made a quick turn, and 

 dashed into a wide but shallow pool, taking his place 

 beneath a huge combing rock to defy me, forcing me 

 down so that I had to cross the reach and play him from 

 a little gravel beach in the eddy. As I routed him out 

 he went into the air, and for a second I saw him in a 

 rift of the sun a radiant, beautiful creature, too beauti- 

 ful to catch. Time and again he manoeuvred to go up 

 or down, but by more luck than skill I kept him there, 

 played him to a finish in what was doubtless his home, 

 and brought him, fighting, to the net, the living rainbow 

 of the Sierra Madre. 



I have landed brook and lake trout and some of the 

 gamiest fishes of the sea, but inch for inch this trout of 

 the Coast Range, this Salmo iridius, is the peer of them 

 all. Perhaps it was my fancy, possibly I was carried 

 away by the beauty of the place, the charm of the situa- 

 tion, but I forgot certain black bass, certain brook trout, 

 and a wild, miniature gorge I knew in New England, and 

 mentally awarded the rainbow the palm. 



The fish which I took from the net weighed nearly 



