MOUTH OF CLEAR STREAM. 319 



assure you there never was and never will be a more 

 brilliant breakfast party on the banks of the Androscog- 

 gin, even after those days come, which will surely come, 

 when cities will replace the forests. The trout were de- 

 licious, the flavor excellent, the flesh firm and rich, the 

 color as deep red as the darkest Long Island trout. Our 

 boxes of stores supplied abundant variety for the table, 

 so that during the eight or nine days which we passed at 

 Errol Dam we lived in luxury. 



All along the river, from the dam down to the bridge, 

 we found more or less trout during the day. As the sun 

 went westward I recalled a talk I had held in the Cole- 

 brook bar-room with a stranger, who said to me, " When 

 you are at Errol Dam go to the mouth of the Clear 

 Stream." 



Below the bridge the Androscoggin takes a short turn 

 to the south, and has there formed a broad bay, several 

 hundred feet across. On the west side of this the Clear 

 Stream comes in; and finding a boat near the bridge, at 

 about five o'clock we pushed across, and ran the bow on 

 the bank at the junction of the streams. As it was now 

 late in the season, this was theoretically a good spot for 

 trout to gather, and await the later freshets before they 

 ran up the colder brooks to seek spawning beds. Nor 

 was theory disproved by facts. We found large trout, 

 and abundance of them, and had all the work we wished 

 until dark. That evening we killed twenty-nine trout, 

 each weighing from two to three pounds. 



Thereafter we passed the days in somewhat uniform 

 routine : at the dam in the morning, killing fish in the 

 swift water; at the mouth of Clear Stream in the evening, 

 taking from twenty-seven, our smallest catch, to thirty- 

 four, our largest, every evening between sunset and dark. 



