128 Fish Stories 



take, and then to the buzz of the little reel, stze-stze-ste- 

 e-e-e-e-e, away he went with the delicate line, making the 

 welkin ring. I followed on and on, giving and taking, now 

 wading around a point of rocks, or out upon the little 

 beach, back again into the pool to see him jump and go 

 blazing across the water, sending little waves of spray into 

 the air. 



Sometimes he had me on the run, and bore away — a 

 resistless force on the light tackle — and I could see him, 

 side against me, hammering on the line, as the fitful beams 

 of light came through the interstices of the forest. By dint 

 of hard coaxing, I gradually brought the fish in, held the 

 net out of sight that it might not alarm him, and then when 

 finally beaten, but not conquered, I made sure of him. 

 Walton says of angling as did Dr. Boteler of strawberries: 

 " ' Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubt- 

 less God never did.' And so, if I might be judge, God 

 never did make a more calm, good, innocent recreation than 

 angling," and I might add, a better, a harder-fighting fish 

 than this. He looked five pounds but I did not weigh him ; 

 I gave him and myself the benefit of the doubt. 



The deepening shadows of the afternoon, the wind that 

 caught the little stream at various angles and made riffles 

 everywhere, brought the climax of this fishing day. Guile- 

 less of any thought of butchery, I might have become a very 

 Volscian in Coroli, as every drop of the fly was followed 

 by a strike, and I repeatedly jerked my lure from fingerlings 

 and offered it to their betters ; and so, working slowly down 

 from pool to pool, filled my creel, not to the legal, but to 

 the conscience limit. 



I would not create the impression that the angler is al- 

 ways so favored in the San Lorenzo or Soquel. I never 

 failed to take a reasonable catch in either stream, but the 

 fish do not always run large. So beautiful and accessible 

 a trout region is the Mecca of scores of anglers, and no 

 streams are more assiduously fished than these. They are 



