July 25, 1903.! 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
67 
^ i READY FOR THE CAST. 
further, to where "Bill" Counterman, the best fly-fisher- 
man along this stream, sits on the doorstep of his tiny 
mountain dwelling, and regards us with a sarcastic grin, 
"Howdy ! Ye don't say ye kum fur fish ? No use ; no 
water ; they see ye !" 
Then he talks of the land-owners along the creek having 
told him to keep oi¥ fishermen, to warn them of direful 
things if they cast flies here. For the first wish with him 
is to impress visitors with a sense of his importance. He 
has fished this brook, man and boy, during forty years 
' of actual residence on its banks. 
After what he considers a due amount of persuasion, 
he is induced, as he meant to be from the statt, to fish for 
us, so we may not return to the Gap with not even one 
trout; for with his long, special knowledge of the haunts 
of the trout here, he can catch three of them while even 
a skillful angler who is a stranger to the stream, would 
get one. 
He is shown our fly-books; and after finding fault with 
all the flies, and saying it is foolishness to use even the 
gray-drake and fox, which he praised at the same seascn 
two years ago, he selects a dozen of the best, and us;s 
them in preference to his own, which he had announced 
were "specially made for me in Bostiiig, and the only fly 
'at takes trout hyar." 
This man is indeed a character, and we give his picture. 
His hard, often almost destitute mountain life, has not 
shaken his courage, his faith in himself, his garrulous 
egotism. In his tiny house I have seen ten dollars' worth 
of fried trout piled high on his table to feed his nine chil- 
dren and himself and wife. He cuts hoop-poles and cord- 
wood in fall and winter, hauling them to Stroudsburg, 
twelve miles distant, and starting at four o'clock the 
coldest mornings. He raises a few bushels of buckwheat 
from a stony field. But his principal income is from 
summer trout-fishing for men who cannot catch trout 
themselves, or wish more trout than they are likely to get. 
WATER-BREAK MADE BY A TROUT THAT HAS MISSED THE FLY. 
A mixture of shrewdness and backswoods philosophy. 
|easj'- in old clothes and rubber wading boots, full of 
reminiscence, knowing every . rock along this stony and 
difficult brook, drawing a very long bow, and making a 
brave fight for himself and a great family, he is a pic- 
turesque backswoodsman, and a study for the most ex- 
pert fly-casters. He fishes with one fly, and nearly always 
up stream. 
"Fly acts more nat'ral ; an' ther mud an' stuft' ye stir 
up ain't goin' down under yer flies an' scarin ther fish." 
Long, long plodding through wildest woods where the 
boulders stick up through brown of fallen leaves and 
pine-needles and among laurel and rhododendron bushes, 
?in4 ^ye are at the cabin |Duilt by a fisherman of Philadel- 
phia, who, with Mr.. E. D. Hemingway, of that city, owns 
a fishing privilege along a mile or two of the stream. 
Here is a picture of our party at the cabin. 
Flies were cast in vain. The writer lost four beauties 
during the day because they were hooked where it was 
impossible to secure them. Scarcely a foot of that whole 
rocky bed but has its pitfall.'; and difficulties of boulders, 
and submerged, fractured, sharp-edged rock — upended, 
sidewise, sloping — presenting a most treacherous and 
generally unseen foothold. Every step must be taken 
carefully— felt for. You go over a flat rock three feet 
under the rushing water, feel its edge, and cautiously step 
ofi" into water a foot deeper, where sloping edges of more 
rocks invite slipping and possible fracture of an ankle, and 
where the green water-alga; add to the danger of a bad 
fall. And yet to wade in that stream is a great pleasure, 
for it is very beautiful, and contains exceptionally large 
trout. You do not know what moment you may be 
fastened to a large one, and have your work cut out for 
you. Glance at the accompanying illustration of just one 
vista along that brook, and you will understand. At the 
right stage of water it affords excellent trout fishing. 
Each pool and rapid is a picture. There is a delicious 
sense of real wildness. A single morning wade there 
will show you dozens of real wild birds, and not a single 
sparrow^ 
One of the Philadelphians who owns fishing rights 
there, is a rare combination of hard-headed business sense 
•and enthusiastic nature-love. It is a great pleasure to 
hear him tell of his life along Saw Creek. He calls it 
"up there." I give tiie substance of one such talk; but I 
cannot reproduce the face and eyes lighted up with his 
love of it all : 
"The camp-fire up there is a solace and a joy— the ally 
of dreams. The quails and thrushes and grouse all take 
you by surprise; swallows swimming in the wind, or a 
thornbush in blossom around a bend and holding nests of 
bluebirds and warblers. There the three joy-calls of the 
whippoorwill, and the 'passion of midsummer' in the 
throbbing boom of the nightjar, come unexpectedly in the 
'bill" counterman. 
windless, moonlighted silence. The whole thing is to me 
a kind of wild love-rainbow on a background of green. 
1 know those brook-voices mighty well — sturdy at the 
falls, low-voiced medleys of song on rapids : _ and_ the 
woods are a harp of sighing under brave mountain winds. 
I wonder if you will understand when 1 say the stream's 
beauty and music are CousinS to the beauty of the west 
wind in the emerald haze of the woods. I am a dreamer 
up there; but dreams are quite as much realities as rocks. 
I have known that whole region from boyhood. My eafly 
summers and springs were sweet with it; and they are 
lived over again when I get there. Those pines and hem- 
locks are my brothers and sisters. I know every note of 
the water. Even over in Philadelphia I sometimes hear 
it calling to me. Just last week I was up there in a 
glorious day ; and the stream was one winding, moving 
dazzle, and dancing leaf-shadows. In that water and its 
music is the beauty of sorrow, the beauty of love and of 
life in the forest, the beauty of wildness, and of faith, 
and of wanderings and cadences of the harp, and there 
is friendship in the wind and wild flowers, and in the 
very pathless ways of the wild bees. 
"That, sir, is w'hat I call seeing. Now let me tell you 
about taking a blind man up there, a chap with eyes that 
could not see, and a heart that did not know. I had 
often told him what good times I had up there, even 
when I did not get a single trout. He is a prominent 
business man in a great city, a bank director, and with 
a keen ej^e for a dollar ; but he cannot see a wild flow-er. 
"Well, I drove that man up Saw Creek, all the way to 
the cabin. He had an idea that to catch trout, one merely 
had to sit on the bank and the trout w^ould come and 
hook themselves ; and that you could fill a creel that 
way in tW'Cnty minutes. I left him sitting on the bank, 
and w-ent oif to try for a fish or two, and came back with 
three small trout, and told him. His disgust at the 
poor fishing was immense. We had an excellent 
luncheon in that glorious, wild dining-room, after which 
he wanted to 'go home.' 
"I went into the cabin and found that he had written 
in pencil over the doorway 'Nothing in Inferno can 
eiiual Saw Creek.' And I came out and looked across 
the valley to the mountain range where I had often been 
so happy ^yith my gun and bird-dog. There was a fine 
summer wind, and the Avoods over there were roaring 
with pleasure, and cloud-shadows and sunshine were 
playing hide and seek over miles on miles of that long 
hillside, And I heard 3 red squirrel chickareeing oa 
top of the cabin, and went around and looked up at him ; 
and he just jerked his tail and body, and said to me: 
'Old man, you and I understand this thing up here ; but 
that fellow is not-one of us!' And before I thought I 
answered back right out loud : 'Right you are, little chap ! 
and when I come up here next week he will not be along; 
but I shall bring you a quart of chestnuts, and I hope 
you will lunch with me!' And that fellow looked at me 
as if he thought I was crazj^, and asked: 'What are you 
talking to?' And I drove that blind man out, and on the 
road I stopped where a quail was whistling on the fence; 
and this fellow asked: 'What are you stopping for, and 
what is that making a noise?' And over in Philadelphia 
at a club, he drank his coffee and smoked, and used his 
napkin and finger-bowl, and said to me : 'I look back on 
that god-forsaken country and wonder what under the 
heavens takes you there!' And I remembered the fif- 
teen inch trout that I hooked in rapid water; the one 
that ran between mj^ legs ; and what a royal fight he 
gave me, and how handsome he was ! I recalled the 
pool shown you now ni this picture. See the ripple there — 
the splash in the water where a trout rose and missed my 
fly? And I mentally asked that city clubman: 'Which 
is the more god-forsaken, this club, or that stream arid 
forest?' He will not go there with me again, for I now 
understand and shall remember that a fine adjunct on a 
pleasant trip up there is a congenial companion who is 
not blind and deaf." 
Our party spent the day on the stream, and three rods 
secured only fourteen trout. But we caught and brought 
away much that we could not show, and that will at- 
tract us to the stream again. I want a photograph of the 
trespass sign three miles above, staring out from a thicket, 
right beside the brook : 
"No fishinher 
Tresperzpersikotid." 
There are about five miles of good fishing water that is 
open to the public below that sign. Dark flies like the 
brown-hackle, gray-drake and fox are the favorites. 
How the pen lingers, trying to escape the closing of 
this series. The very last entries are made in our fish- 
ing journal. 
Next week the final article of this series will mention 
some of the Indian history and tradition of the Dela- 
ware Valley. L. F. Brown. 
The Nepigon, Its Beauty and Its 
Trout. 
O priceless memories! peerless days! 
Pinioned with flowers; O forest life! 
Oft will my lyre in gladness raise 
Song to those shades with raptvire rife, 
Far from the world's wild, weary strife! 
—Street. 
The halo of romance and mystery that once upon a 
time hovered about the North Shore of Lake Superior, 
has vanished before the dawn of civilization. 
The whistle of the steamer re-echoes now from its 
lofty cliffs and caverns, once sacred to the voices of 
the winds and waves. The charm of Silver Island has 
faded away like the mirage of the lost islets, since it 
has been despoiled of its hidden treasure. Giant waves 
from off the angry lake still seek refuge within the 
cavern of the Grand Portal and clash against its rock}^ 
dome, mingling their thunderous reverberations with 
the awful voice of the storm. The Pictured 
Rocks, that often conceal their treacherous features 
beneath a veil of fog, the shroud of many a gallant 
sailor and his craft, still retain all their pristine beauty. 
But gone forever is the wild weird charm that once en- 
wrapped them. That dread demon of the Chippewas, 
Keeweenaw, who thrusts his giant arm seventy miles 
out into Gitchee Gammee, has been shorn of his mystery 
and copper. Relics of a hoary past have been unearthed, 
showing that elfins or mound builders delved beneath its 
surface ages agone. The air throbs to the music of fall- 
ing waters. Pre-eminent among its beautiful cascades is 
Silver, that leaps from a dizzy precipice into the willing 
embrace of Superior. Lovely trout still disport in its 
fairy caverns, safe from the prying eyes of the Indian 
netter, who robs the north shore of its finny treasures,_ to 
tickle the palates of the gourmands of the Lake cities. 
Fly-fishing in the rivers and off the rocks is not what it 
used to be, despite the efforts of interested parties to re- 
vamp its weaning glories. 
Among the multitude of streams and rivers that empty 
into the lake are many that contain trout. Take the Steel, 
Jack Pine, Michipfioten, the Indian water way to Hud- 
son's Bay.all were once the chosen haunt of great speckled 
trout. To-day not one of them can live up to its past 
reputation. But there is one river that still presents a de- 
fiant front to the destructive forces that have swept into 
oblivion many a lovely trout water; this is the noble 
Nepigon, the peer of them all. The speckled trout of 
this "incomparable river attain such monstrous propor- 
tions as to completely overshadow the product of such 
waters as the Steel, Mink, Gravel and others. Long ago 
v/hen the Canadian Pacific was but as the vague dream of 
an enthusiast, when an occasional steamer or sailing 
craft was the only link that bound the North Shore to 
civilization, a few choice angling spiritss drifted in to 
Red Rock, then a lonely Hudson's Bay post at the mouth 
of the river. 
As the few scattered rain drops heralded the storm, so 
these early pioneers proved to be the forerunners of a 
mighty host. How they must have reveled in 
this region of enchanting delights. The Nepigon, 
like an untutored child of nature, was easily 
beguiled of its treasures. The wildest dreams 
of the angler could be realized in those halcyon 
days when every pool and rapids was thronged with huge 
primitive trout that sprang aloft, again and again, in 
their eagerness to seize the gaudy cheat. The pool near 
the railroad bridge, now silent and deserted, was the 
chosen resort of a- select coterie of anglers, whose hearts 
sang with boyish delight as they cast their flies upon its 
trottbled waters and landed trout that rivaled the giants 
of the Rangeleys. The fame of the wonderful river soon 
spread like wild fire throughout Canada and the States, 
causing many to make the pilgrimage to the Promised 
J.and, eager to secure the cream of the sport. At thai; 
