The Tragedy of a Barbless Hook 



streams that lazily run through meadows yellow with 

 early buttercups, or haunting some shore line with my 

 fly rod, bugging for bass. And each place has its tragic 

 moment, memories of the thrill that comes but once 

 in a lifetime. All of the water that I have fished 

 hold pleasant memories for me, regardless of whether 

 fish were taken or not, and many of them hold 

 memories of tragic moments. But out of all these 

 tragic moments, perhaps the memory of that big trout 

 out on the Laramie River but then, that is the story. 



We were three Dr. M., from Oklahoma; Mr. T., 

 a banker from Colorado ; and the writer. We went out 

 to the Laramie in July, on the Colorado- Wyoming line, 

 looking for trout. Now the country of which I write 

 is a fair land, of golden mornings and of pure sunsets ; 

 a land where the skies come down to rest on the far 

 blue hills soft as a benediction. And here we found 

 trout. We found them in pairs; we found them in 

 schools; and we found them in droves that literally 

 churned the pools and riffle heads into foam at feed- 

 ing time. 



Both of the other gentlemen had lent themselves to 

 my tutelage in the art of dry-fly fishing, yet each day's 

 close found them nearly as rich in fish as I. There was 

 little use of art here. You had but to hit the water 

 with a fly, and smash ! you were fast in an old warrior. 

 It seemed that nothing mattered neither the kind of 

 fly, its size nor the way it was offered. Things that 



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