SPECKLED TROUT 



As it was then after two o'clock, and as the dis- 

 tance was six or eight of these terrible hunters' miles, 

 we concluded to take a whole day to it, and wait 

 till next morning. The Beaverkill flowed west, the 

 Neversink south, and I had a mortal dread of get- 

 ting entangled amid the mountains and valleys that 

 lie in either angle. 



Besides, I was glad of another and final oppor- 

 tunity to pay my respects to the finny tribes of the 

 Neversink. At this point it was one of the finest 

 trout streams I had ever beheld. It was so spar- 

 kling, its bed so free from sediment or impurities of 

 any kind, that it had a new look, as if it had just 

 come from the hand of its Creator. I tramped along 

 its margin upward of a mile that afternoon, part of 

 the time wading to my knees, and casting my hook, 

 baited only with a trout's fin, to the opposite bank. 

 Trout are real cannibals, and make no bones, and 

 break none either, in lunching on each other. A 

 friend of mine had several in his spring, when one 

 day a large female trout gulped down one of her 

 male friends, nearly one third her own size, and went 

 around for two days with the tail of her liege lord 

 protruding from her mouth! A fish's eye will do 

 for bait, though the anal fin is better. One of the 

 natives here told me that when he wished to catch 

 large trout (and I judged he never fished for any 

 other, I never do), he used for bait the bullhead, 

 or dart, a little fish an inch and a half or two inches 

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