8o Recreations of a Sportsman 



bank. Then came the joy of retrospect, the 

 weighing, and my friend, as a good joke on me 

 for having so underestimated the size of the rain- 

 bow trout of Feather Kiver, placed him on my 

 creel, as I could not get half of him in, and 

 photographed him then and there. I do not re- 

 member the exact size of that trout, but he was 

 between six and eight pounds; a pound more or 

 less counts but little to an angler with luck and 

 imagination, and every time the story is told he 

 lengthens out and weighs a little more. 



With due humiliation I must confess that on 

 my first trip it took me nearly a week before I 

 could carry my head at the angle of conquest 

 with the few fly-casters who had kept the secret 

 of Feather River near to their hearts for years. 

 Big creels of trout w r ere coming in, but not for 

 me, and I recall the terrors of that week as a 

 piscatorial slough of despair. I did as I was 

 told. I tried to cast as did other and better 

 anglers, but day after day I, who privately con- 

 sidered myself something of a black bass angler 

 and had taken some big trout elsewhere, caught 

 nothing. 



The trout of Feather River measured me up 

 as game; they toyed with me for a week, then 

 suddenly under the tuition of my friend Leonard, 

 a patient, long suffering angler, who took the 

 pictures of leaping trout and salmon in this 

 volume, I achieved merit, and almost the first 



