14 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
hunch. Fishermen don’t bother about calling it anything. They mere- 
ly feel it—and they fish on. 
That something urged me up the prairie, casting as I went. The 
sky was still overcast, and the trout were just as unresponsive as 
before. But there was an atmosphere of promise about the whole 
scene. I quickened my pace. 
Suddenly, with apparently no reason at all, for the air and the 
water were quite clear of any insects, a huge rainbow trout broke the 
surface not more than ten feet from where I stood. Several hurried 
casts into the widening rings failed to incite the fish to further action. 
But I sensed a change. I felt it. I saw it. 
A breeze came hurrying from somewhere out of the pines away 
off to the east, and caused the long prairie grass to nod and sweep in 
graceful waves. It danced along the bosom of the shining river and 
whipped little choppy wavelets about the reeds against the shore. It 
scattered the gray mists and rolled up little puffs of white cloud. It 
let the sun shine through and showed great patches of blue sky. And 
it stirred to life hundreds of gauzy winged May flies or uprights. 
They had been clinging to the shore grasses, but the lapping wavelets, 
the breeze and the sunshine put them to the air. Already the water 
well out from the shore showed signs of life. It lumped and twisted 
here and there in a most surprising manner, and I knew what it meant. 
I knew the time had come. 
Two number 10 blue Uprights went whisking out on the next 
favorable breeze, but they were caught by a cross gust, and doubled 
back, falling into the water twenty feet short. I would try again. 
Hauling in the line in big swinging loops, I was on the point of re- 
trieving the flies when a mighty tug accompanied by a swirl of the 
surface water quite upset my plan. 
Here I would pause. 
I want to feel it all over again—and I want you to feel it. That 
inexplicable thrill. That intense excitement—that quickening of the 
muscles; of the eye; of the senses. After hours of sickening disap- 
pointment—after so long and patient an effort—after hope when even 
hope seemed to be gone, this big fish, taking the fly almost at my 
feet, and the dozens of others rolling and leaping out there where the 
water flashed told me that the crucial moment was at hand. 
I could have waved my arms and yelled with sheer joy, but for- 
the delicate business at hand. As it was, I struck firm and hard. The 
little bamboo curved to the work and quivered as the hook went home. 
A splash, a spurt and a lordly leap; a gleam of red and silver against 
the blue. I can see him now in the sun. I have seen him a hundred 
times since that epoch marking day on the prairie. And as often have 
I seen the many others which followed him out of the cold sparkling 
water onto the green prairie grass at my feet. 
Your true fisherman is an optimist indeed. He is a splendid ex- 
ample of the time-honored proposition that there is greater pleasure 
in anticipation than in realization. He goes a-fishing with high hopes. 
He conjures up scenes of magnificent pools full of great fish eager to 
take his lure. And he honestly thinks that some dav, in some land, 
he will somehow find really ideal angling. So he plans another trip, 
and another, and another, always confident that the next will work a 
full realization of his highest hopes. If he be a fisherman born, he is 
never disappointed, even when he has to admit that the fishing wasn’t 
all he had expected, because, behind it all, away back in his innermost 
