96 Fish Stories 



Los Laurelles is by no means the head of the Rio Carmelo 

 which reaches the sea in the bay to which Vizcaino gave the 

 name Carmelo, more than two hundred years ago. The most 

 charming indentation on the whole coast of California is 

 Vizcaino's " Ensenadita de Carmelo." You may wade on, 

 and on, for miles up into the range, with the scenery ever 

 wilder, with new plants, greater steeps ; but I found the • 

 lower reaches more to my fancy, and he would be hard to 

 please who could find fault with this little river, as it winds 

 down the Carmel Valley through a meadow rich in greens, 

 with flowers of every hue, fruit and grain, as we found it 

 one April, after a winter of heavy rains, and before the 

 " limit " man had wrecked the hopes of honest anglers. 

 When the sun came over the Santa Lucia, it caught me cross- 

 ing a little potrero where black live oaks reached up to the 

 mountains, and I plunged into the thickets of alder and 

 willow farther down, where the river had made a sharp 

 deep bend, and tall sycamores and laurels filled the interven- 

 ing space, over which could be seen the distant ranges still 

 wrapped in purple. 



Here the stream was well wooded, and I waded through 

 tunnels and alcoves of green, dropped the fly into dark pools 

 in which the mountains seemed inverted, and played the 

 game in impossible places; now taking them out from rifts 

 where the willows caressed the water, and then — tell it not 

 in Gath ! climbed trees, not altogether for the view, or for 

 exercise, but for reasons best known to anglers; indeed in 

 these happy hunting grounds I spent much time contemplat- 

 ing my fly high above me, and climbing for it; but these 

 are mere details; when the fly was not in the tree top, it 

 was being towed about by a trout, so there were compen- 

 sations. 



The river always flowed by the willows, alders and 

 laurels; and the laurel here is the fragrant bay-tree, not 

 the rhododendron, which grows farther north. Now the 

 stream runs by some steep bank, eating into it, cutting its 



