i94 Recreations of a Sportsman 



out into the bay, and every morning numbers of 

 salmon fishermen go out from here and the bay 

 is soon dotted with boats, private and profes- 

 sional; the scene, one long to be remembered. 



At Capitola the inn headquarters of the sal- 

 mon fishermen is directly on the beach, and the 

 same is true of Santa Cruz, both having long 

 piers reaching out into Monterey Bay, devoted 

 entirely to fishing and not to commerce, as one 

 might suppose. All the conditions are delight- 

 ful. It is never warm here in summer; in fact 

 the climate is as near perfection as one can 

 find, a storm of any kind being unknown in 

 summer. One season I spent at the shore; an- 

 other I duplicated the Del Monte fishing by 

 making my headquarters about five miles up in 

 the redwoods on the Soquel Kiver a delight- 

 ful little stream which winds its way down from 

 the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Soquel was 

 once a famous salmon stream, but now it is 

 given over to steelheads in season, and is stocked 

 with rainbow trout, not large ones; but then 

 the Soquel is not a large river, just large enough 

 to enable one to cast a fly and pass the time 

 in true Waltonian fashion. I fished for trout 

 one day and could hear, as I waded the stream, 

 the roar of the surf in the bay, five or six miles 

 away, the valley being a perfect sounding board. 



So to-day it was trout in the alluring stream, 

 and the next morning mine host carried me down 



