Jan. 25, 1886.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
78 
THE BIG TROUT OF BLOSSOM'S HOLE. 
Bob was a long-legged boy, fond of books, angling and 
shooting. Or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, fond of 
books and passionately in love with his rod and gun. 
Who should know this better than the writer, who was, 
long years ago, Bob himself. It was as many years ago 
since that same Bob was a youth of 15 that the writer 
can scrape but a partial acquaintance with him He 
seems to be a kind of pathetic, shadowy self, who enjoyed 
all the pleasures and but few of the cares of life. A boy 
whose only anxiety was lest he should be kept at home on 
his Saturday holidays in the glorious months of May and 
J une, before the summer droughts had shrunk his beloved 
stream and the trout had deserted the shallow ripples to 
skulk in the shadowed depths of the deep pools. 
July and August were abhorred months in the boy's 
calendar. Neither fishing nor shooting could be enjoyed, 
because the trout would not bite, and no well-brought-up 
boy would shoot anything in that season of the year. At 
that time the passenger pigeon was still fairly plentiful 
in that part of the country and gave some summer sport, 
but that was all. 
The following event so often occurs to Bob's older self 
that he recalls it for the pleasure of other "brothers of the 
angle," even at the risk of having the story — if story it be 
—considered too juvenile. It may be somewhat mouldy, 
it having occurred forty years ago, but still the writer 
hopes it may not be a "chestnut." 
It had gone out through all the surrounding country 
that there was an immense trout living in Blossom's Hole. 
None of your ordinary big trout such as are chronicled 
every season, but a Big trout, with a big B— one that 
was known by the boys as "an oP sockdolager," or "an 
ol' whopper." One that caused the juvenile eyes to pro- 
trude from their sockets when caught a glimpse of, and 
that caused an angler's heart to jump up and lodge cross- 
ways in his throat when he came lazily wagging his way 
up for a nearer inspection of the gaudy cheat that danced 
so alluringly over the surface of his favorite feeding 
ground. 
He was a trout of great dignity and deliberation, as be- 
came a fish of his age and size. He had been discovered 
in the pool soon after the ice went out, and had been lured 
with every device known to honest fishermen, but as the 
end of June approached he still remained untouched by 
steel. He was seemingly untroubled in the presence of 
man, and never ran back into the recesses of the pool 
unless threatened by too palpable demonstrations. His 
feeding ground, which he strictly policed and preserved 
for himself, was just at the foot of the riffle, where the 
turbulent rush of the water broke into and merged with 
the deeper waters of the pool, and where the boils and 
swirls came whirling to the surface of the calmer reaches. 
Here he could be seen, day after day, lying without ap- 
parent motion, about midway of the stream. 
Among the shadows of the rippling waters, it was not 
given to every eye to detect him. But once seen it was 
impossible to see anything else in the wide pool. He filled 
the eye and captivated the heart. 
The river, in which this monster of the trout family 
dwelt, was a little one as rivers go, but a lasting pellucid 
stream, It ran within wooded banks almost from source 
to termination. Its life was a turbulent one throughout 
its course. Running through a hilly country with steep 
and broken banks, unfit for the husbandman's use, ex- 
cepting for pasture for stock, its waters were unsullied by 
the debris washed in from cultivated fields. It was an 
ideal stream for trout, and anglers made long pilgrimages 
to worship at its shrine. Bob loved it as he loved no 
other inanimate thing, and knew every pool, rapid and 
shallow in it for ten miles, better by far than he knew 
his arithmetic. 
Blossom's Hole was the largest pool on that portion of 
the stream. The hills at this point receded from the 
stream in a semi-circle, leaving a beautiful little meadow, 
or intervale, on the south bank, some half a mile long. 
' Just at the upper end of this opening in the hills the 
river came dancing down a long chute of broken lime- 
stone, and plunged with a headlong leap into the level 
of the little valley. Here it plowed out a deep pool, lim- 
ited on the south side, against which it leaped in its 
spring fury by a strong bulwark of limestone. On the 
: north side the head of the pool was banked by water- 
worn boulders growing gradually smaller as one went 
down stream, until it ended in a long sweep of silvery 
sand, covered with ripple marks and the prints of feet of, 
various creatures. Here of old the moose, the caribou 
and the deer came to quench their thirst; but even as 
early as Bob's day these creatures had receded before the 
wave of incoming humanity, and at the time we write 
of anything larger than a coon's footprint was matter of 
serious talk in the neighborhood. 
This pool received its name of Blossom's Hole in the 
earliest days of settlement, in the end of the last century. 
A pioneer settler of that name chose a home on the banks 
of the river, of which this little valley formed a portion. 
He came in one summer and cleared a part of the rich 
intervale and planted a crop. He garnered it into stout 
log buildings erected by his own hands, when autumn 
had ripened his corn and the frosts had withered his 
potato vines. When the frost king came and had locked 
the little stream fast in his tightening arms, and had 
blanketed the earth with its winter mantle, our sturdy 
ettler started out for the settlements to claim a waiting 
bride and bring her to this rough but cosy home. He yoked 
up a pair of oxen that he had brought in with him, and 
with a load of corn upon an ox sled started through the 
woods for the double purpose of getting his corn ground 
at the distant mill and to bring back his flour, together 
with his bride and what "plenishing" she might chance 
to have. Those were not the times of journeying for 
pleasure. Those were fin de sieele days, but an entirely 
different kind of a siicle than the one we are enjoying. 
Those were the days when one had to travel on horse- 
back or on ox sleds, along stumpy trails, cut through the 
primeval forest; and across corduroy bridges, where the 
way was too swampy to venture without these safeguards 
against sinking into the oozy depths, where only the bull- 
frog could safely go. 
In these days of steam, electricity and bicycles, we look 
back with a shudder upon what we call such hardships! 
But those hardy pioneers asked no commiseration at any 
one's hand. Their lives were healthy, happy and honest, 
Can we boast of as much? 
But I have digressed from the main theme. At thi*8 rate 
Bob will be gray-haired before he catches that trout. 
On starting out for his bride, Blossom crossed the river 
at this point, and the new ice being treacherous in the 
middle of the pool, dumped the whole outfit into the depths 
of the icy water. 
He rescued everything after a gallant struggle, and the 
next day started again with a new load of corn. 
This unpropitious start proved to be of no ill omen, as I 
knew him long years afterward as a bent and gray-haired 
man, finishing out the end of a well-spent life in a com- 
fortable home. 
But from that day this pool in the river was known as 
"Blossom's Hole." 
In this particular summer that I write of, when Bob was 
15 years old, this big trout was discovered. Whether 
Bob was rightfully entitled to this trout by virtue of first 
discovery I have no means of knowing, but he always 
believed he was. But others soon found him also, as the 
noise of his fame soon spread; and Bob would rather have 
lost one of his front teeth than to have given it away that 
such a monster trout dwelt in the whole river. 
He wanted the glory of capturing that noble fish him- 
self; and when the whole fishing fraternity knew the 
secret, what chance was there for him? 
He fished for him early and late. He got up at 3 
o'clock in the morning and fished till schooltime— and 
sometimes later! He resumed after school hours, and 
stayed with his job till the darkness settled down and he 
had to quit^ His mother scolded and his father threatened, 
but the boy was bewitched and could not leave off. 
He tried the dunghill hackle and all kinds and devices 
of flies that his slender pocket money would afford. 
Under his grandfather's direction — who fully entered 
into the spirit of the thing and was Bob's aider and 
abetter all through— he manufactured flies of all kinds, 
sorts and description. He created devices that, after they 
were completed, he could have safely worshipped un- 
troubled by the decalogue, as they resembled nothing "in 
the heavens above, or on the earth beneath, or in the 
waters under the earth." He tried all kinds of worms he 
could dig out of the earth or find lurking under stones, 
the barks of rotten trees or in the wood itself. He tried 
minnows and the ventral and thoracic fins of other trout 
and suckers. All kinds of grasshoppers and flying things 
were in turn shown to that trout without avail. He and 
his grandfather even bred some "gentles" in a piece of 
liver, but with no better success. And then came the 
great time of anxiety in the boy's life. Whenever he 
went for another try he would find some one else after 
the same object, and would sit eating his heart out, fear- 
ing that they would succeed where he had failed. 
At last one day he gave up hope, when he saw the 
greatest pot-fisherman of the whole country sitting trying 
to snare the fish with a wire loop. That was the time 
when Bob took a solemn vow never to snare a fish "be- 
cause it was a low-down kind of way to catch 'em." 
"Unsportsmanlike" it would be called nowadays. But 
old king Salmo salvelinus waei "onto his job," and paid 
no more attention to the snare — only to avoid it — than he 
did to all other devices. When he saw the tremendous loop 
approaching his nose or tail he would edge away with a 
gentle motion, and when it had passed by resume his old 
station. When the loop-wielder became too persistent he 
turned and darted into one of the caverns of the rock and 
was seen no more that day. In these days of dynamite 
such a fish would not have lived a day with such a man 
in bis vicinity. But, thank God! dynamite was unknown 
in those days, and a fish with wits had a fair fighting 
chance. 
Bob had procured a nice little reel, carrying 50yds. of 
line, and, with his grandfather's help, had woven enough 
line out of horsehair to fill it. This he attached to a 
home-made rod of good temper, and still hoped for vic- 
tory. 
He had a chum named Sandie, the son of a newly- 
arrived Scotchman, who had "guddled for troot" in Auld 
Scotia, and he tried his skill upon the fish. The boys first 
alarmed the trout and drove him into his rocky fastness, 
and then Sandie dived after him. Bob could see his 
gleaming white skin at the bottom of the pool, as he lay 
clutching the rocks with one hand as he sought to beguile 
the fish with the other. Suddenly the trout shot out in 
positive alarm and sought safety in the deepest part of the 
pool, where he disappeared under some huge boulders. 
Sandie came blowing to the surface with his eyes pro- 
truding with excitement. 
"Losh, mon!" said he, "but yon's a gran' troot. I 
gruppit him weel, but he wes that muckle that my han' 
wadna haud him, an' he just slfppet through ma fingers 
as easy as ye wad say humph!" 
And so another scheme came to naught; and Bob was 
glad of it. He wanted the honor of the capture him- 
self. 
It was approaching the end of June, and the maple 
leaves were losing their green and brittle tenderness and 
were getting leathery. The grass was ready for the 
mower's scythe, and the bobolink's song was losing some 
of its rollicking freshness. Wild strawberries were going 
out, and raspberries would soon be in. And worst of all, 
school would soon close, and summer heats would put 
an end to fishing. And still the great trout held undis- 
puted sway in his little kingdom, but was dropping more 
and more into the shadow of the rocks. 
And then came a big storm and summer freshet, and 
the boy's heart leaped, for he knew that this gave him one 
more chance. 
On the last Saturday in June Bob and Sandie started 
for another* try at his majesty. The storm had ceased, 
but light clouds were still sailing across the sky. A pleas- 
ant south wind was blowing and everything was so fresh 
and beautiful that the boys were intoxicated with the 
mere fact of existence — though they knew it not. • 
The water was subsiding fast, but was still murky from 
the effects of the storm. The boys could not see into the 
water and consequently the trout could not Bee out. Bob 
slipped his shoes and stockings off and softly approached 
the bank, bidding Sandie stand afar off to await the re- 
sult. With a common brown hackle and green drake on 
his cast, he once more threw his line across the pool and 
let his flies drift down in a pretty curve over the home 
of the trout. 
A breathless instant, and then came a swirl of the 
water, a heavy weight on the springing rod— and the fight 
was on! The boy's heart fairly leaped into his throat and 
choked him. For one awful instant he thought he was 
going headforemost into the water, so dizzy was he, and 
then, with a yell to Sandie, he braced himself for the 
fight. 
It is of no use trying to recall the incidents of that bat- 
tle. The whole affair passed in a whirl of delirious excite- 
ment, and the only clear-cut fact remains that victory 
perched upon the banner of the boy. 
After some moments of hard and desperate fighting by 
the fish, and the use of some skill and more luck on the 
part of the boy, the giant trout came gasping into shallow 
water, where he was "grupped" through the gills by 
Sandie, and borne in yelling triumph far up the bank to 
be gloated over. 
The brown hackle and muddy water had finally deluded 
the king of the stream — the big trout of Blossom's Hole. 
Arefar. 
CONNECTICUT FISHING INTERESTS. 
Hartford, Conn. — Editor Forest and Stream: I think 
perhaps it may interest some of your readers to read 
of how the future of Connecticut's fish and game in- 
terests looks, and perhaps some may like to discuss 
plans for still further advancement. By the courtesy 
of the management of this paper I was permitted to have 
published an open letter, in which I called upon Connec- 
ticut sportsmen to rally and help in an effort to advance 
at least on a line with other States. They responded to 
that, or to others, I know not which, but I never expect to 
see a more determined support accorded any measure 
than was given to the bill for the reorganization of our 
Fish Commission. Mr. Collins and myself, though per- 
sonally behind the measure, do not for a moment take but 
our individual share of the credit and success, and it is 
most gratifying to know that Connecticut sportsmen are 
a unit in this line of advancement now so splendidly 
begun under the guardianship of a most practical and 
energetic commission. 
But our work is not done. We can advance further, 
and I want to see if we cannot rally against the market- 
shooter and fisher (at least so far as game fish are con- 
cerned). The future value of game and inland game fish 
cannot be measured by their market value. Their value 
is represented by what they create by being sought after, 
and therefore we should stop their passage through the 
open market and turn the productiveness of their exist- 
ence directly into the more remote districts where they 
live. That is a method of distribution of wealth, 
although not great in one place, yet out of the many 
resorts there is much. 
When we consider that the sportsman buys of the 
dealer in tackle, pays carfare to the railroad, pays for 
livery teams at the hotel, board, hire for guide, often a 
sum for privilege to enter private land and many other 
expenses which help distribute money in numerous chan- 
nels, will any one say that the value of wild game and 
game fish is measured by the market price? Then if it is 
not, why not take at least game, which we cannot propa- 
gate artificially, out of the market and make it a perma- 
nent source of revenue, as above stated? 
This may seem radical to the more conservative, but it 
is the only alternative if we save our game as a perma- 
nent source of wealth. No law of any kind concerning 
game or game fish should be tolerated if it does not per- 
mit the districts where the game and game fish are found 
to reap all the benefit possible. 
Our State law regarding trout prevents July fishing, 
and I am fully convinced it is wrong, as more general 
good would come from having that month open season 
than any other, for that is a month of vacations, and. if 
trout are not intended for laboring people to catch, then 
the State should stop propagating them. As regards low 
streams at that time we had lower streams in June of 1895 
than July; it was a simple question of rain, and it is as 
likely to come in July as June. Let us start now on a 
'crusade against the open market and ultimate extermina- 
tion, and in favor of a broad and liberal distribution of 
benefits to be derived from the pursuit of game, together 
with its permanent preservation, Chas. W. Hall. 
A Fresh Mullet from the Sky. 
Oxford, Fla,, Jan. 15.— Yesterday afternoon, while sit- 
ting on our front piazza enjoying the warm sunshine and 
deeply interested in reading Forest and Stream about 
the "Lost Man," my attention was diverted from that very 
strange character by the swooping noise that is often 
made in this country by a buzzard from a very great 
height by closing his wings and pitching toward the earth 
at a great speed. I also have heard the same sound made 
by brant and geese. 
Almost at the close of the swooping noise was a heavy, 
dull thud on the earth not exceeding 50ft. from where I 
sat, and on looking in that direction I saw a l^lbs. mullet 
lying in the yard. I then bethought me of the scream- 
ing, noisy racket I had heard from the fighting birds, and 
on looking up saw the fish hawk and eagle half a mile 
away, both wending their way coastward. I then made 
a more careful survey of my supper, which as a supper for 
the eagle failed to connect. It was still wet with sea 
water, and only for the fall from so great an altitude 
would have been alive, as it was only slightly marked by 
claws and beak of the fish hawk. It certainly was a very 
fresh mullet for one living fifteen miles from the Gulf, 
and made a good breakfast for three of us in family. 
J. P. M. 
Michigan Bass Season. 
Ann Arbor, Mich., Jan. 18. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Will you kindly inform me through the medium of your 
valuable paper whether the inclosed cutting from Game 
Laws in Brief giving the Michigan law on black bass can 
be construed to mean that there is a close time on that 
fish iu this State? Heneaoe Gibbes. 
Trout, Landlocked Salmon, Grayling, Mu3kallonge, 
Bass.— Act of May 24, 1889.— Ssc. 1. No person shall 
catch any speckled trout, landlocked salmon, grayling or 
California trout, from the 1st day of Saptember in each 
year until the 1st day of May following thereafter; nor 
shall any person catch any muskallonge, or any black, 
strawberry, green or white bass, by any means whatever, 
except by hook and line, from any such lake, river or 
stream, from the 1st day of March in each year to the 1st 
day of July following thereafter. — From the Game Laws 
in Brief. 
[The law makes a close time only for modes of fishing 
other than with hook and line, and parmits hook and line 
fishing the year around.J 
