The Lure of the Rainbow 107 



a " regular pigeon," my companion remarked as I sent it 

 whirring through the air, and dropped it, dry fashion, as 

 near a swirl as I could. Surely this was the ecstacy of an- 

 gling, the sum of all Waltonian joys, to drift along this land 

 of deep shadows and radiant tints, and cast and cast, each 

 fly falling a few feet farther to the east, so covering all the 

 ground. Here was where Beebe, the champion big Rain- 

 bow angler, took his record fish. Off that long log Walker 

 killed his famous ten-pounder. Near here Pinchot killed a 

 fifteen-pounder on a five-ounce rod. This splendid pool by 

 the Point of Rocks was made famous by Bush, and so on ; 

 each separate stretch of shore line seemed to have its pecu- 

 liar history, recalled as we drifted on into the ever changing 

 lights and shadows of this land of dreams. 



I had made, perhaps, ten long and I fear unwieldy casts, 

 necessary on account of the perfect clearness of the water, 

 when I dropped the fly into a little snug harbor, beneath a 

 quaking aspen; and according to angling ethics here, per- 

 mitted the fly to lie a second, then began to move it toward 

 me with an upward inflection of the split bamboo. The big 

 fly had cut the clear surface perhaps a foot, when the water 

 broke in a violent swirl ; there was a flash of gleaming silver, 

 the rod bent violently as I instinctively struck, then a daz- 

 zling radiant vision went whirling into the air, and I, with 

 quivering nerves was playing my first big rainbow, or was it 

 playing me ? Here is a very fine point. How it came at me, 

 how it went repeatedly into the air, how I nearly fell over- 

 board, are matters of personal history, and need not be dwelt 

 upon; but for the first few seconds that living rainbow, 

 which went pirouetting over the little river on its tail, throw- 

 ing impossible aerial swings and leaps, filled a large space in 

 my imagination. I fully expected a repetition of my first 

 fiasco, and could not believe that the big fly would not come 

 whizzing at me through the air, shot by the frantic fish. 



Again and again the rainbow leaped, a silvery radiance 

 flashing in the sunlight, dropping back to dash about the 



