The Frenzy of Unrest 301 



it, and leaping again, it fell prone and surged bravely out 

 into the lake, taking line in feet and yards, while Jim backed 

 hard and sent the canoe shooting after it ; then I stopped it, 

 forced the splendid fish into the air again and took my turn 

 for the first time, and played the reel handle to the aria of 

 its discomfiture. 



It is a weakness of anglers, of one at least, to believe that 

 each fish is the best, and in that brief, yet ardent struggle, 

 it seemed to me that I had never played so hard a fighter, 

 one so deserving liberty, and had it not been the first fish of 

 the season, a first-nighter, as it were, I might have connived 

 at its escape. 



How it plunged into deep pools it knew full well ; how it 

 bore bravely away, actually towing the stern of the canoe 

 around as Jim sat in rapture with oars in place; how it 

 sprang again, as though to challenge me, and circled around 

 the boat, are but memories, yet stamped deeply on the log 

 of memory. The three and a half-ounce bamboo was light 

 enough for fair play, there was no question as to that, and 

 for a while the trout toyed with it, but in the end came 

 slowly in, fighting every inch and every inch a game fish, and 

 when on the quarter, as I turned it, as it dashed along 

 canted up, gleaming, flashing, eying me in disdain, to fall 

 into the deftly handled net of my boatman, who lifted it up 

 into the sunlight, an animated sunburst, a living tourmaline 

 in its splendid investment of tint, hue and tone. 



A colossal rainbow two feet nine inches in length, which 

 weighed nine and three-fourths pounds when I took it from 

 the waters of Klamath, looks down from the wall upon me 

 as I write. It fought me half an hour on an eight-ounce 

 rod one happy day last summer, yet the battle this three- 

 pound trout of Blue Mountain Lake waged is most enduring, 

 and had the big rainbow been possessed of half its spirit 

 I should not be chronicling its defeat. 



" That's the uncertainness of fishin'," said Jim. " I was 

 goin' to take you for a sure thing about five miles up in 



