102 Fish Stories 



more graceful than a golden trout, alive in these clear, icy, 

 sun-lit waters. 



Alive, I say, for a dead fish, withered, dusty, warped, 

 sticking to the dried leaves, is no pleasure to any one, and a 

 golden trout at best is but a bite. 



And this is the point of it. Let us keep them alive; more 

 than half these trout are dead already. A dozen or two 

 have been taken by naturalists, a few dozen more by anglers, 

 and the rest have fallen prey to the meanest creature that 

 infests the mountains. Already his empty whisky flask is 

 scattered along the shores of every joyous river. Already 

 the little trout are rotting on its bank. Already the local 

 papers tell of the exploits of John Smith and his cronies, 

 who caught 450 golden trout with a fly in one morning; of 

 Peter Robinson, who sent a box of 380 home to his club; of 

 John Jones, who was equally ignorantly and greedily waste- 

 ful of beautiful life. I do not write the real names of these 

 folks, because I do not know them. Such people ought not 

 to have any names. It is a waste of good atmosphere to 

 call them anything. 



I read to-day in the San Francisco Chronicle, of five 

 large parties which camped all summer on Volcano Creek, 

 feeding on Salmo roosevelti. Another party reports leaving 

 300 on the bank, because they could not eat them. Another 

 of the same sort boasts of having stowed away 65 fishes for 

 breakfast. 



Trout hogs we call them ; but in doing so we owe a con- 

 trite apology to the relatively well-behaved swine. Let us 

 exterminate them if we can, for we must save the golden 

 trout, the trout of Roosevelt and of White and of the 

 gracious water. 



