268 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



There are many beautiful rivers and streams that 

 drain the eastern watershed of the Rockies into the 

 Missouri, for example, in which no trout of any kind 

 were originally found. When I first set eyes on the 

 North Platte River, the thought at once occurred to 

 me what beautiful salmon and trout water was there 

 running to waste ! It then contained nothing but 

 ' suckers ' a most uninteresting bottom-feeding fish, 

 with an abortion of a mouth apparently incapable of 

 taking a fly. 



Since those days the Wyoming State authorities 

 more power to them ! have introduced rainbow-trout 

 into the North Platte River, and straightway for the 

 angler the whole situation has been changed. 



I strolled out from the old Pick Ranch one autumn 

 day in the year 1897, with my trout-rod in my hand, 

 intent on casting a fly into the streams and pools of 

 the river I had known for so many years, but had 

 never previously fished. 



Walter Cowan, our ranch manager, said the trout 

 were there, though, not being a fisherman himself, he 

 had not caught any. The statement was, of course, 

 accepted, but I wanted practical proof, nevertheless, 

 and in my own mind was not fully convinced without 

 it. As a matter of fact, none of the boys on the 

 ranch knew anything about fly-fishing, and no trout 

 had been so far caught in this particular part of the 

 river, though thousands of trout-fry had been turned 

 in twenty miles lower down at Fort Steele during the 

 previous two or three years. 



So I put up a cast of three fair-sized Scotch flies, 

 and commenced operations in the first good pool near 

 the ranch. The weather was turning cold the month 

 was October and the fish were somewhat sluggish, 



