The Trout of the Great Forest 123 



You may know the trout at its best, the sudden rush, the 

 extraordinary power for so small a fish, the exuberant fancy 

 of the game, as it leaps high into the air, seemingly striking 

 at the line with its tail. A reliable angler assured me that he 

 had seen one five feet above the water, and you will agree 

 with me that compared to it, the rainbow is a laggard and 

 the brown cut-throat or even brook trout a gay deceiver. 

 I gained ten feet to lose twenty, and having a very delicate 

 tapered line and a long slender leader, I played it gently, 

 and so was taken down the stream over little rapids, around 

 bends, and almost lost it a dozen times before I came to 

 serious work, and began to reel. 



How it laid back and hammered on the line, and tested my 

 tackle a score of times, are facts engraved on my memory 

 as I slowly brought it to the net ; yet I almost lost it, as when 

 it saw the corded menace creeping toward it, that mysterious 

 something without body, or soul, or shape, which every one 

 knows but does not understand, that specter which alarms 

 and puts good luck to flight, the " second wind," took shape 

 and the fish was away again seemingly all its vigor unim- 

 paired, making a gallant rush that nearly carried it out upon 

 a little beach of shining sand; then back it came into deep 

 water, and when I dropped the net and rounded it up, into 

 the air it sprang again, to fall and surge, fight and hammer 

 at the bending rod 



"Till floating broad upon his breathless side, 

 And to his fate abandoned, to the shore 

 You gayly drag your unresisting prize." 



Which was what I did, reeling it carefully ; then, my net 

 at the bottom, I slowly dragged in until I reached the shal- 

 lows, then brought it struggling up the sands. 



I lost another large fish near here, which I laid to a split 

 leader, and after fishing down the stream a mile or more, 

 with varying luck, climbed the bank to pass the noon under 

 the trees while all self-respecting trout in the San Lorenzo 

 were taking a siesta. 



