202 Recreations of a Sportsman 



Carmel Bay, or Monterey, in these cool summer 

 days, you are sure of salmon, that is in July, 

 August, and often in September, as the big fish 

 are here in vast numbers, doubtless taking their 

 last meal, fattening up for a long fast, as they do 

 not appear to eat after they enter the rivers; 

 in fact the salmon is one of the strangest of 

 all fishes and at the same time possibly the most 

 valuable, the great catches of the Northwest 

 being a notable and valuable national asset. 



Bill I fancy was too fond of gambling. It 

 may have been his besetting sin, as with his 

 fund of general information he could easily have 

 found some more lucrative work than catching 

 salmon with a hand-line for the market. He 

 was fond of telling stories and once, w r hile we 

 were drifting and waiting in a lull of biting, 

 he said that he made his first money in a wager, 

 on a bet on cats. He wagered a friend that he 

 would see more cats in an hour's walk than he. 

 The friend took him up. They started off, 

 returning at the end of an hour. Bill's attend- 

 ant reported that Bill had pointed out thirteen 

 cats; the other party had not seen one. He ex- 

 plained his luck by saying that it being a very 

 hot day the other man walked in the shade, 

 while he, Bill, kept in the sunny streets, knowing 

 that cats like sun. I was glad to know that 

 Bill had read Salmonidj as from that classic he 

 filched his cat story, which illustrated a char- 



