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terms, Ponr Dollar* i a Year. t 

 Tea Cents a Copy. I 



THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1877- 



( Volume 9.— No. 6. 

 Ino. Ill Faltoa St., N. Y. 



Selected. 



THE KING OF THE BROOK. 



Give me the rod ami reel, 



Ttie wee strong line and the keen-barbed hook ; 

 G'.ve me the joy all true fishers feel 



Who vanquish the King of the Brook ! 



He is a goodly prince: 



In his royal robe of red and gold, 

 Like a sultan's, rieh with sheeny tints, 



How he darts through the water cold ! 



A kingly home Is his : 



The sparkling pool in the mad spring stream ! 

 Name me the palace brighter than this 



In the silvery ripple's gleam. 



Ah, 'tis a glory rare, 



With footstep soft, and with bated breath, 

 To tempt the king from his fastness fair, 



And battle him unto the death ! 



He dies as monarchs die 



Who of dastardly fear give no sign, 

 But fight for life till their latest sigh— 



Royal proof of his royal line ! 



Ye who extol the town, 



Take its wealth, its pride, its fleeting joys, 

 Its mansions high, with their fronts of brown, 



Its beauty, its fashions, its toys. 



But give me rod and reel, 



The wee strong line and the fceeu-ba-bed hook ; 

 Give me the joy all true fishers feel 



Who vanquish the King of the Brook ! 



M, A. KINGSFOBD. 



TIME was, when the approach of spring infused a quicker 

 life into these veins— when the warming of the sun and 

 the singing of purling streams sent me, with lithe limbs, up 

 among the hills and high valleys, a devotee of that edifying 

 religion taught by St. Izaak-the Art of Angling. 



"That true joy that anglers feel" is little known by him who 

 Bits the live long daywiih his legs dangling over a dusty wharf 

 feeling for flounders with a hoop-pole and chalk-line ; nor 

 • yet by him, who, "rocked on the rolling deep," till his very 

 stomach goes out of him, tugs away at a cod, or eke a halibut, 

 , Ullhis fingers are worn to the bone, by much grabbing and 

 gripping of the line, and flourishing of the gaff and the " mun- 

 tle." Doubtless, the hearing something drop in the dust be- 

 hind one, "flat as a flounder," has its little satisfactions -with 

 reference to the frying-pan. The writer has himself experi- 

 enced the laborious rapture of the strife in snaking and being 

 Snaked alternately by a fifty-pound cod or a two hundred- 

 pound halibut under the disadvantages of a strong tide, a forty 

 fathom line and a five-pound lead ; and he is able to say it is 

 very like undergoing comfort. But after finishing a work of 

 this kind, 1 never, when the season came around, felt an un- 

 controllable desire to go back and do it again. 



But if there is anything in this world capable of affording 

 unalloyed happiness, it's what the Shepherd, in "The Noetes," 

 calls " throwing the flee " for the speckled denizens of the 

 clear brooks and cool lakes. And he who has the gift, and 

 has once acquired the skill, requisite to success, will prize this 

 above all sports. He will become possessed of an anglimania. 

 He will never see the glint of clear water but that he will 

 look, haply, for the rainbow flash of the trout or listen for his 

 spiteful break and quick plunge as he takes the flying game. 

 And the true angler will take no more delight in looking upon 

 a weedy pickerel-pond or a bullhead slue than in contemplat- 

 ing the black flood of Styx or Cocytus^ 



The trout, though a fastidious epicure, is greedy; and, if you 

 know how to do it, and where to look for him, can be caught 

 at almost all times and seasons, and even through the ice. 



It is the custom in many places as soon as the snow is 

 nearly gone and the ground thawed enough to dig worms, to 

 sally forth eager for the first haul, and by soaking at the bot- 

 tom of deep pools to catch a mess of trout. The poor, half- 

 starved fish, not yet recovered from spawning, dull and stupid, 

 manage to gorge the bait and are, with scarce a struggle, lifted 

 out upon the bank. Their heads look large, their bodies are 

 thin and flabby, their colors dim, and, as a luxury for the 



table, they are hardly up to a sucker from the same waters. 

 And yet these pot-poachers carry them home— usually with a 

 few big chubs to grace (grease) the "string"— cook them with 

 boar-pork in order to get a "game flavor," crack Jersey cham- 

 pagne over them, and boast of their exploits in trout fishing! 

 Then there is another class of Irout fishers— save the mark !— 

 Who, from April to November, plunge into small streams with 

 nets, baskets, lines, poles, etc., and literally "clean them out." 

 And you will hear these fellows, too, brag over the splendid 

 lot of trout they caught. Caught— Eh ! 



If I were a keeper of sheep, and not of fish, and had such 

 fellows for neighbors, I should hope they wouldn't get sick of 

 fish and begin to hanker after mutton. 



In most waters in*Jew York State the trout does not begin 

 to take the fly in a manner satisfactory to the adept until— 

 varying in different waters— from the 1st of June to the 1st of 

 July, "indeed, my experience would put these limits nearly 

 a month later. But on the southern slope of Long Island 

 they affect to kill trout with the fly as early as the 1st of 

 March ; and in the celebrated Caledonia Spring it is said they 

 may be killed in that way every month in the year. The 

 trout, in brooks, is never in perfection until, leaving the slug- 

 gish waters, he is found in the rifts, and in lakes and deep 

 rivers in the spring-holes. 



Then it is that he begins to jump at the natural fly, and, 

 after a few hot days and muggy nights, becomes capable of 

 verifying that rather spry comparison expressed by the phrase, 

 "quickr'n lightning." If the "Culprit Fay" had been con- 

 demned (instead of thrusting a dipper under the clumsy leap 

 of a sturgeon) to catch one of the diamond chops under the 

 rainbow arch of a trout, when in his prime he flips a fly, it is 

 altogether probable that his high crime and misdemeanor of 

 loving a mortal maid, would have been unatoned for still. 

 In fact, it is possible that he would have given up the task in 

 despair, and have gone and done it again just like any mortal. 

 For my part I struggle against the seductions of spring 

 mornings, April showers and May suns. Even the glory of 

 the apple blossoms cannot now entice me to the stream's side 

 with minnow, grub, worm or spinner. But when the delicious 

 air is laden with the aroma of the red clover blooms, sweet be- 

 yond all "the spicy gales of Araby the blest," then on some day, 

 when a haze dims the brightness of the sun and a light cloud 

 now and then hides his reddening disk, a warm southern or 

 western breeze the while just curling the surface of the pools 

 and broad shallows, set me down with a slow mate that loves 

 "to go a angling, " by some generous stream where saw-mills 

 and tanneries and nets and sheep thieves are not, and then leave 

 me "lapped in Elysium." 



And now for the tackle. For a bait-rod you may use any- 

 thing except a fly-rod. Fly-rods may be of any weight from 

 the heavy ones for salmon down to those weighing six ounces 

 for trout. Doubtless the strongest rod for its weight and the 

 lightest rod for its strength is the Hexagonal, or six-splint 

 bamboo ; and these, as I think, are made in their perfection 

 by Leonard, of Bangor, and Doctor Fowler, of Ithaca, N. Y. 

 In length the rod should be from nine feet to eighteen feet. 

 The latter is the length prescribed in "The Complete Angler." 

 Those who have become habituated to any length will be apt 

 to prefer that. Thirty years ago or so I found in the wilds of 

 Pine Creek, in the month of June, a genial old gentleman 

 whose religion was trout fishing. He was a brother of that 

 Richard D. Davis, of Poughkeepsie, whose eloquence in the 

 Hard Cider Campaign of 1840 charmed and carried away cap- 

 tive all hearts, whether of friend or foe ; and whose maiden 

 speech in the House of Representatives, Henry Clay and his 

 compeers ran from the Senate Chamber to hear. This disciple 

 of St. Izaak had a wilderness of all sorts of fishing apparatus. 

 But his glory was a Conroy rod with a multiplier which held 

 a hundred yards of line. 



This rod was a clief tfomre of workmanship in those days, 

 and when put together was twenty-one feet long. Interpel- 

 lated by a native wherefore he used " such a long fish pole," 

 he said he had been told that the townships about there 

 severally had a regulation prohibiting non-residents from en- 

 tering within their bounds and catching trout ; and he had had 

 this rod made so as to stand in one township and fish in the 

 one adjoining. 



It is'a triumph of art and a streak of good luck for the 

 best fabricator to produce a fly-rod that shah be perfect in all 

 its parts. Some, like a rheumatic man, are stiff in the joints, 



and recoil from the spring with a harsh jar, which is com- 

 municated to the hand. Some others, looking like the very- 

 doubles of the former, are so elastic and so lithe that the hand 

 will feel the pitch and the recoil no more than it would the 

 graceful swinging of the pendules of the willow. The rod 

 must not be too yielding toward the hand, for then the 

 motion will be weak, but so graduated that a quick turn of 

 the wrist will send an increasing wave of motion to the tip as 

 quickly as the brain sends its volition through the nerves. 



The reel, like a woman, may be single or a multiplier. I 

 used for many years a Conroy multiplier— the best in its 

 day— but far too heavy. Now, the Orvis perforated, the 

 Celluloid and Doctor Fowler's hard rubber reel, the last 

 weighing only one' ounce for a trout rod, are all that can 

 be asked for ease and perfection of work. The line should 

 be smooth and strong and small, and as heavy as possible 

 in proportion to the size. Smallness and weight are well 

 obtained by a silk line, braided, saturated with a paint com- 

 posed of white lead and oil, and brought to a lead-color by 

 lamp-black. The line for trout should not be less than thirty 

 yards. Good fly-fishers differ as to the best length of the cast. 

 ing line and the number of flies. I have always used on 

 ponds and large streams a casting-line of ten feet, with three 

 flies. In small streams a yard and a half or two yards with 

 one or two flies is better, 



Now for the flies. "Hie labor, hod opus esV' It is, nO 

 doubt, a fine thing to be competent to sit down on a mossy 

 bank and out of your omnium gatherum of white crows' fea- 

 thers, green monkey's fur, etc., construct a fly just like the 

 living one there on the stream. But I have found it best to buy 

 of those who knew how to tie a fly better than I did. Beyond 

 comparison, the most durable, the most life-like, and in all 

 respects the best flies I had ever seen down to some ten years 

 ago were made by John McBride or in his family. He was a 

 dweller by the Caledonia Spring. I could tell one of hia 

 flies from any other as far as I could see it— and so could a 

 trout. 



In " fly fyssheynge with an angle," as Dame Juliana Berners 

 hath it, some prefer to fish up and some down stream. A 

 good angler or fly-fisher will fish up or down, as pleases him 

 or the trout ; or if requisite will take his game on the flank. 

 Other things being equal I prefer fishing down. 



Now, mate, a few casts on a piece of barren water to straight- 

 en your line. A dozen yards below, the stream sparkles over a 

 rift", and, growing deeper, eddies under a half immersed log, 

 and then opens into a handsome pool below. Moving care- 

 fully and keeping the flies from the ground by springing the 

 rodback and forth as I go, when arrived at just the right 

 spot, I let the gay deceivers fall upon the rift. A bright flash 

 and a quick splash and the wrist— not the arm from the 

 shoulder or even the elbow— answers to the sight and sound as 

 instantaneously as sight and hearing. The elastic rod responds 

 to the signal and the trout is hooked. 



At the same instant the tip and the arm go up, the rod bends 

 to a parabola. What a flutter ! Keel the tip down, holding 

 him there. No chance to play him here. It will not do 

 to let him flounce long with the advantage of this current, nor 

 -will it do to let him down under the log into the pool. It is 

 clear that he must come out. But the rod cannot lift him. 

 How ? The beach is low and gravelly ; step backward, lower 

 the tip and snake him out by sheer strength of the line. Auld 

 Johnny's tackle is true, and there he comes throwing himself 

 end over end. Hurrah ! A thrust of a penknife in the neck- 

 that is kindness and mercy— and in a wisp of grass he lies in 

 the creel. Silver and green and gold ; beautiful ! Thirteen 

 ounces avoirdupois. 



All this while— and it wasn't long— my slow mate by a flank 

 movement has hooked the match of mine in the pool below, and 

 having room to play has stepped in with the game, and is 

 carefully playing and taking all the chances. The trout goes 

 this way and that with a desperate rush, but the steady and 

 unrelenting elasticity of the rod checks and turns him, until, 

 tamed at last, he floats, wearied and despairing, to the hand of 

 the patient angler, almost. He is just carefully putting his 

 hand on the capture, and, in stooping, has incautiously given 

 a little slack line. Kerwhollup ! The little hook, worn loose 

 by long playing, drops out, and my mate's expectant hand 

 shuts upon water. Reader, you may think Job had his patience 

 pretty well tried, but we don't read of anything like this. 

 Now I remember me that I am a cripple, and we hirple 



