April 4, 1903.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
269 
Cancel and Camp Life Along the 
Delaware River. 
Snaps WUh~a' Pocket Camera, and Fly Casts witli Tatnafacfc 
Poles. 
I. — The Poles are Cot and "Cored.*' — The Swamp. 
The aged fisherman leaves his reel, 
And. his rods of split-bamboo, 
To enter a swamp, and cut and peel 
A tamarack pole, so he may feel 
The thrill of memory's joy. 
When barefoot and freckled, with mudi ado, 
He searched that swamp all through and through, 
A wild, free fisher boy; 
And with an old jackknife cut the pole, 
By the winding path that leads 
To the pond, and the haunted "waste-weir hole" 
Where he caught the "punkin seeds!" 
"That's the first fishhook I ever owned. Didn't catch 
but one fish with it — a sucker over a foot long! Then it 
was honorably retired and cherished! Almost sixty years 
ago, and I'm fishin' yet! But those boy days were the 
best ! I had more fun ketchin' that sucker than I had 
getting that twenty-pound salmon you gaffed for me last 
summer at Southwest Brook! " (In Newfoundland.) 
My old comrade had taken the 
tiny hook from an envelope in a lit- 
tle compartfnent of his "tackle trunk" 
— a dulled, rusty, "Limerick" hook, 
size ten ; and all that long vista of 
threescore years oiily made his recol- 
lection the more vivid. 
• "Lost the very first hook on a snag 
in Jacobs Creek, out in Michigan," 
he added. "Even before that I had 
fished with bent pins in the 'deep 
hole' where we 'went in swimmin'.' 
That hole was about ten feet long, 
where the brook curved below a bank 
at least six feet high; in those day.s 
I thought it a tremendous proof of 
courage to slide down its blue clay- 
made wet and slippery — and splash 
right into the center of the muddy 
pool — about eighteen inches deep. 
Oh, how dirty and happy we boys 
would get there! I loved that creek 
(luite as well as I afterwards did the 
Delaware River and its herring — for, 
as you know, there w^ere no black 
bass in the Delaware until in Octo- 
ber, 1870, when a lot of small ones 
were put in it at Easton, just below 
Lehigh Dam." 
He stroked his long, white beard 
with his left hand, and with his right 
reached for a bulldog briarwood pipe. 
He smoked the strongest Perique 
tobacco ; as its fumes filled the "fis!:- 
ing den" I opened a window facing 
Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, Avhere 
troops of scarlet leaves were scurry- 
ing and tossing in the wind-gusts o^ 
an Indian summer afternoon. 
"I know a larch-swamp in the hill, 
back from Hancock up there on the Delaware, where the 
tamaracks grow just right for fishpoles." 
I waited for his foreseen suggestion of a trip. 
"I've been thinkin' I'd go up there, cut and peel an' 
dry some poles, and, next summer, take a run down the 
Delaware, and fish jest the same way as when I was a 
hoy. You're a decent sort of a fly-fisher — ^know how to 
sit in a boat, and not talk. How'd you like to join me — 
go up there and help cut 'em, and fish with 'em a spell 
next summer? An' I'm goin' to take my pocket camera 
an' catch a lot of pictures, too." 
The prospect was tempting. Memories of my own joys 
as an urchin, happy on Bean Creek with a tamarack pole 
and a can of earth-worms, crowded upon me. There was 
a long silence. 
"Agreed !" 
"All right: next Saturday by the Erie morning train 
for Hancock, to cut, trim and skin our poles ! Bring an 
old jack-knife not worth over a quarter, and dull. No 
use tryin' to be a boy again unless we use the same old 
knives. Wish we could go to-morrow, for I seem to 
smell the tamarack gum now. Remember how we used to 
use the points of our knife-blades to pick the balsam off 
the bark, and the hardened pink gum from aroynd the 
knots?" 
A week later two gray-headed men were plunging 
through the tangle of a larch-swamp between two ranges 
of high hills a few miles from Deposit, New York, while 
.•I liveryman, who acted as driver, waited by a highway 
fence and wondered "whether the two old lunatics would 
git lost in there, an' have to be hunted up?" 
The best times are those which come unexpectedly. 
That hunt for fishpoles was royal ! 
"See that niire-hole?" snorted my friend. "That's the 
place where I et my first wild turnip. Whew! How my 
mouth did blaze about two minutes after I bit into it! 
There are lots of groundnuts here, as we called them in 
those days, but their tops are dead, and we could not find 
them. Remember that small, white, divided flower on 
their little tops in the spring, and by which we 'told' 
them, and the bulbous roots, about half as big as a marble, 
and how we would gather a pocketful and give them to 
the little girls up at the log schoolhouse?" 
"Yes. And back there is a knoll where I used to come 
and eat my dinner with you ; and the rocks with the very 
same patches of mosses. Wonder how they stay so fresh 
and green? Right beside this tree I found an orchid in 
1858 — used to call 'em 'lady slippers' then. And yonder 
is the shard in the woods where we gathered wild lilies 
for the school-teacher." 
A long, critical search! The slim, straight tamaracks, 
ihin, like canes in a brake, were there by thousands, ten 
and fifteen feet high. Bitter-sweet, ivy, coleswort, loose- 
strife, liarebell and fems, mint, wintergreen and cresses, 
^fjer. laurel, rjiodpdendron. hawkweed and life-everlast- 
ing were also there by the acre — abundant, peaceful, feel- 
ing the first stroke of the frost, but wild, sturdy, auda- 
cious, lush, untamable — a hundred forest odors from them 
mingling with the balsam smell from the larches! 
Mouldering logs, upturned and fire-scarred roots, 
shadows, and the wind-borne leaves from the maples on 
the far hillsides finding us even where the pools of water 
were thick with dun "cattails," whose "fuzz" was carried 
away on every gust — all in a tangle of dreamy Indian 
summer fragrance! 
Six "poles" were cut, the jack-knives being used with 
the blade downward on their bases as we bent them over, 
so they would cut easy. A long, hard pull with them 
through the swamp and its obstructions, the highway not 
being reached until we had seen a couple of partridges 
"get up" and leave our company ! 
Then, each with a big "cud" of tamarack gum and three 
poles, back we went to Deposit, the green tops of the 
poles trailing behind our wagon, and an evening's work 
in the livery barn — a dozen idlers and boys standing 
about and watching us round the butts, trim away the 
branches and peel off the bark, leaving the poles white, 
slippery, straight and heavy. 
"Goin' ter cast flies fur fish with them sawlogs?" queries 
a native. 
"Yes — with lines tied fast to their tips, and two feet 
longer than the poles, so as to allow for the wind. The 
current will take the flies to the full length of pole and 
INDIAN SUMMER ON THE DELAWARE. 
line. We'll lose over half the bass we hook, but we shall 
have more than we can use, and will return some to the 
water." 
The green poles were placed on cross-boards nailed to 
the rafters in a peak of the barn, whose owner vouched 
for their safety while they seasoned and grew dry, light 
and spring}'. 
"Blamed ef it jest don't make me feel j'oung again!" 
drawled our host. "Say, can't ye take a feller with ye 
a while when ye come up next summer? Jest one after- 
noon? I know where there's a good campin' place by a 
spring about two mile below." And he pointed to a 
hill _ far down the noble Delaware, whose rapids were 
talking to the forest that comes close to the shore on the 
other side — the whole, seen in the afterglow of sunset, 
forming an exquisite picture ! 
He wrote to us six weeks later at Christmas-time ; 
_ "Am sendin' ye a box of holly by express. Had the 
six tamarack poles down from the barn-peak yestiddy. 
Every one straight an' light, and supple's whalebone ! I 
kep turnin' 'em while they was dryin', so they'd be 
straight. Remember, I want ter go with yer the fust day ! 
That spring below town is right by ther mouth uv a trout 
brook, an' I'll have my wife go down an' have supper all 
ready fur us when we kum in from bass fishin' !" 
L. F. Brown. 
Jottings of a Fly-Fisher.— III. 
I HAD one great day in June, 1901, and the sport was 
especially welcome, coming after a disappointment. Start- 
ing after midday, I reached the stream I was about to 
fish late in the afternoon with rain falling in torrents. I 
put on my waders during a lull, and found the water 
not only very high, but so much discolored that fishing 
was out of the question, at least with any prospect of suc- 
cess. There was no train to return that evening, or I 
would certainly have gone home. The rain ceased early 
in the evening, but I went disconsolately to bed and 
dropped off to sleep with the roar of the swollen stream 
sounding in my ears. The next day was Saturdaj^, and 
when I went to breakfast, I was told that the water had 
cleared considerably. I soon found this to be the case ; 
it was clear enough for fly, though still very high. 
The sky was overcast and it remained cloudy all day, 
constantlj'^ threatening rain; in fact, I believe that a few 
drops did fall from time to time. 
Under these circumstances I was not long in getting 
under way. For some time I could do nothing. I could 
not reach the casts I knew, so as to fish them properly. 
At last I was encouraged by capturing a small trout of 
about a quarter of a pound. Proceeding downward I 
came to a place where the stream was greatly expanded 
over a wide rocky bed. Far out in the middle, near 
several large stones under water, was a kind of pool of 
fairly deep water, yet with a heavy current through 
it, while directly below was a large and dangerous rapid. 
We knew the place above the rapid of old as the haunt of 
large trout. With great difficulty I succeeded in wading 
out far enough to fish this place properly, hy casting a 
long line, although the water was within an inch or so of 
the tops of my stockings. I was fishing with only one 
fly, a kind of nondescript, tied by myself, with a light 
yellow body of wool on a No. 10 hook. At about the 
third cast, when the line was well extended and the fly 
over the lower end of the hole or depression, and just 
where the water probably began to shallow a trifle, I de- 
tected a very modest rise. I struck, and instaiuly an im- 
mense fish leaped from the water. The leap was diago- 
nally across, not directly away from me, and really ihfe 
ti'out appeared a perfect monster in tin's position, Ihe 
curve of its broad back and wide spotted side, with the 
splendid propeller, a tail that to my exciied eyes appeared 
as big as a palm-leaf fan, the fish cleared the water by 
many inches, and a desperate rush fur liberty followed. 
I thought just then that I could not move (I changed 
my mind afterward), and had only thirty yard> of line 
on my reel. Before I could curb this charge, only three 
or four turns were left me on the spool (yon must re- 
member that I had hooked the fish at the end of a long 
cast) ; in fact, I don't think that I really slopped the trout 
at all; he turned of his own will when he struck shallow 
water. I put on all the pull I dared, under which the 
fish gradually dropped back into the deepest pan of the 
pool. I had recovered many yards c£ 
line when suddenly the trout rose to- 
ward the tUirface, a great swirl ap- 
peared, and then my reel screamed 
again. Before I could say Jack Rob- 
inson or even John, the fish had 
rushed down the stream and was in 
the heavy swift water at the head of 
the rapid. Nothing could stop him 
then ; any attempt to butt him would 
have torn out the small hook, or 
caused a break in tny fine cast. The 
line was quickly exhausted and I fol- 
lowed in water which for some yards 
was up to my waist. No thought of 
getting my wading stockings full 
then. The coarse rocks were cruel 
and the footing exceedingly bad, but 
I stumbled on, my legs like towers of 
lead. I was about winded, when the 
fish took it into his head to stop in 
the rapid, probably behind some 
stone, but it appeared to be right in 
the nn'ddle of the rushing current. 
The check was but momentary, but it ' 
enabled me to get opposite the fish, 
and as he checked his wild career 
once more before reaching the shal- 
lows at the bottom, I managed betier 
and felt that I had my good fellow in 
hand. I think that we were both 
pretty well played out by this time, 
and after many short rushes I 
stranded the fish where there was so 
little water that he fell over on his 
side. On getting him in hand I was 
greatly disappointed to find that in- 
stead of a five-pounder, he was two 
pounds less. 
Had this fish been lost, say in run- 
ning the rapid, he would have been remembered as that 
four or five pound trout that got awaj'. Nevertheless he 
was a noble trout and made a great fight. 
The water was cold and the fish very active that day. 
It is not the rule for brown trout to leap, but many of 
those caught did so more than once. I took a two pound 
trout that did not, but most of the fish were of large size. 
The basket consisted of twenty-four trout; twenty of 
these I carried home next day, and they nearly filled the 
big creel, capable of containing twetity pounds of fish; 
This was a wonderful day's sport; in some respects the 
best of my life. 
The large stream, higli cold water, unusual average size 
and activity of the fish, combined with the depression and 
disappomtment of the day before, all seemed to enhance 
the sport and make of this a record day indeed. In a 
petty brook such fishing is not possible, as even if you 
take a large fish he has not room to show his powers and 
IS apt to sulk. The heavy water and peculiar place in 
which the largest fish was hooked made the sport rather 
like salmon fishing in miniature. 
We forget most of the disagreeable or unpleasant inci- 
dents attending our sport, but we never forget the big 
fish we have lost. When a boy of thirteen years I saved 
all my pocket money for a considerable period to purchase 
a fly rod; it was too good a rod for a boy without ex- 
perience and was soon broken. I remember the sad affair 
very well, as a large fish played an important pan in the 
event. 
At the end of a thicket on Boimy Brook (thi.s, by the 
way, was a favorite breeding place' for a single pair of 
woodcock), was quite a deep pool, with hollow grassy 
banks, forming a fine retreat for trout. A common smk'e 
fence divided the thicket from a meadow, and by standing 
on one of the lower rails I could cast my worm in the 
pool. I did so on this occasion and the swift current 
carried the bait under the hollow bank; I was not con- 
scious of a bite, but on trying to withdraw the line found 
it was held fast. Forgetting my delicate tackle, a vigor- 
ous pull was given, the rod bent double and a large trout 
was drawn to the surface. Becoming wildly excited, I 
endeavored to haul the fish out on the narrow margin 
between the fence and the pool, the , trout was actually 
drawn half out of the water, when the rod broke in two 
places, the trout disappeared and before I could gain con- 
trol of the line, freed himself from the hook. I could 
have lifted up my voice and wept; my feelings can hardly 
be realized. My legs were weak, and a« sensation of utter 
goneness and woe possessed me. To break my beaut if til 
new rod vvas a frightful misfortune, but to lose that trout 
was calamity indeed. _ I had never seen such a trout ; it 
was at least twelve inches long and may have weighed 
three-quarters of a pound. The big friend who accom- 
panied me soon came up; he was older than I, and for 
soroe years I could not forgive him Jiis efforts, to make a 
