INTEODUCTION 



It is more than two years from the present time of 

 writing that I last experienced the thrilling sensation 

 imparted by feeling a lively five-pound ouananiche skip- 

 ping and darting about at the end of my line. It was 

 an afternoon in the end of August^ and the scene was a 

 pool of the Metabetchouan Eiver, which flows into the 

 Lake of St. John on the southern side. Unfortunately;, 

 my friend Mr. B. T. D. Chambers, the author of this 

 work, who had previously been my partner in many a 

 peril on the far rapids of the Peribonca River, had been 

 obliged to leave me for Quebec, and therefore he was not 

 able to Join us in the fun. For I w*as accompanied by 

 our mutual friend Mr. Albert Patterson, so well known 

 as a good all-round sportsman; and although he had 

 that day given up fishing himself in disgust, as the 

 ouananiche positively refused to take the fly, a very jolly 

 time we had of it together, so constantly were his ser- 

 vices required with the landing-net, and from the rocky 

 nature of the banks it required a really active fellow 

 like himself to land the fish. Armed with an old but 

 somewhat stiflE trout-rod, which already in 1892 had seen 

 twenty years' good and faithful service, I had scrambled 

 out along a log, which proved the connecting-link between 

 the shore and a small, solitary rook just large enough to 



