THE EAIlfBOW AT SEA (STBELHEAD) , 



One of the best steelhead streams in Southern California is 

 the Eio San Buenaventura while the Santa Ynez leads the 

 angler through some joyous and radiant country from the little 

 laguna at its mouth up into the high Sierras of the Coast Eange. 



The Eogue Eiver in Oregon is a famous steelhead stream, 

 twenty- pounders being not unusual. This river, as its name 

 suggests, is treacherous at points where it flows rapidly through 

 narrow rocky walls. I had my best sport above Grant's Pass 

 where the river in places is sufficiently shallow for wading. 

 It is a charming little stream ; now running along through fields 

 of grain, again hedged in by rows and clumps of willows, or again 

 bounding out into the open and down over some gravelly salmon- 

 infested bed. 



In such a spot I took my first steelhead in the Eogue. I had 

 laid in a large stock of flies upon the advice of an expert- on the 

 region, but when I arrived at the river I found that some miner 

 had been sluicing up the country and the Eogue, which should 

 have been liquid crystal, was a river of golden mud. The fish 

 could not see a fly, but my guide was equal to the occasion, and 

 as a forty-pound salmon ran into the shallows hard by us, he 

 gafEed it, took its spawn, and proceeded to bait my hook in a 

 barbarous fashion when we remember that the river is supposed 

 to be consecrated to St. Zeno, the patron saint of the fly fishers. 

 He tied a handful of the eggs in a piece of mosquito net and lashed 

 it to the hook on the oiled-sflk line attached to my eight-ounce 

 split bamboo. 



The Eogue at this particiflar point was contracted between 

 almost submerged gravel banks about which big salmon were 

 floundering, and the current in a narrow channel ran like a 

 millraee. 



' Now, " Colonel," ' said my guide, ' the scheme is this : I pull 



you upstream and turn the boat about, and you sit in the bow 



and cast. Then I jump in and steer her down, and when you 



get a strike I'll run in and you can play him from the bank.' 



It turned out just this way. He pushed the heavy boat 



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