28 
FOREST AND STREAM;* 
tJtfLY 9, 1904. 
of Piney Island, when, the wind dying out, we drifted on 
a bar at the north of a marsh creek, and Harry and I 
were obliged to rig ourselves in Seminole costume and 
jump overboard and push the craft over the bar. Just 
then the wind shifted, coming out of the southeast, and 
we were able once more to get over the bar and into the 
river. We thought our trouble over, and donned our 
discarded clothing, but were scarcely abreast of Pmey 
Island when we again ran aground, and again hastily 
assumed the Seminole costume and plunged overboard. 
Now all who have tried it know the difference between 
running on a bank with a rising tide and trying the same 
involuntary experiment with a falling tide. The tide was 
rapidlv falling, and we worked very quickly and got her 
off, but concluded to remain in Seminole garb (see 
Florida Guide Book) until we were sure we had passed 
the last sandbank likely to catch us. This experience was 
repeated five times, until, as we reached the familiar 
waters near Sabbate's shell bluff, we again appeared in 
civilized cittire 
Our stop was brief at this place, so interesting to the 
archaeologist, for from this shell heap an old trail leads 
across the peninsula to Guano Creek, and to a shell heap 
there and then from the other side of that water a trail 
to two very high sand hills and thence to the ocean. It 
must also have been almost at this very point of the 
ocean beach that Ponce de Leon touched before going 
southward, and entering the harbor of the Holy Cross 
St. Augustine. , , , , 
We had as one of the party the boy who asks questions, 
and it is always a good thing to have such a boy along, 
for a man otherwise is prone to forget those days ot his 
youth when he himself was in the question asking age. 
The questions that do not occur to the ordinary boy are 
few, and I for one am glad they ask them, even if some- 
times they seem somewhat irrelevant. 
Our homeward trip was henceforth uneventful, but 
head winds delayed us until we met a rising tide to still 
further delay, so that our homeward trip was about three 
times as long in time as our outgoing. But we were in 
no hurry to bring so pleasant a voyage to a close. 
We hark back to the nomadic life of our ancestors none 
too often in this strenuous age. It affords the best of all 
mental rests, and gives us again of that simpler life lived 
close to Nature and her heart. 
Let us once in a while still listen to the Call ot the 
Wild " It will do us good. No one felt the force of this 
more than the editor, who couldn't go, having already 
stretched his vacation to the utmost, so he said, it this 
account gives him another twinge, we won't mind. 
A Summer in Newfoundland.— III. 
(Continued from page 5 ) 
It was a good six hours' tramp to the first pool, be- 
tween high precipitous walls, over sharp, jagged rocks 
and moss-covered boulders; but by noon rods were again 
jointed, while the guides put up the tent, and John boiled 
the kettle. A Newfoundlander never can be healthy or 
happy without he "biles de kettle" at every favorable op- 
portunity. To him strong, bitter tea is a greater necessity 
than either bread or pork, and I have known old Jim to 
walk over forty miles rather than miss this beverage tor 
the' short, period of five days at the end of a trip. 
Lunch over, I smoked my head for a few moments over 
a moss smudge to dispel the last traces of a black fly, 
before adjusting the cheese cloth contrivance which htted 
down over my cap. "De flies be cross," remarked Wil- 
liam, but he had hardly finished the sentence when a 
great splash down in the pool sent waves ripplmg and 
chasing each other over its surface, and we knew that a 
good sized salmon had leaped from the water. Dugmore 
ran for his camera, while I seized my rod, and wading 
in knee-deep, cast out into the current a small silver- 
doctor and a medium sized Jock-Scott. Twenty minutes 
without a rise; then another splash at the opposite end 
of the pool, and a bright, fresh-run fish leaped five feet 
clear of the water. I hastily changed my base of opera- 
tions and a few moments later he rose to the Jock-bcott 
—the first rise of the season. It was not the quick, sav- 
age rush of a trout or ouananiche, but the broad back 
and high dorsal fin slowly arched above the surface as 
he missed my fly by nearly a foot. Strange, is it not, that 
big salmon have such small bumps of locality? It is, how- 
ever a failing common to the species, and time and again 
I have killed a fish which previously had missed my flies 
several times by broad margins. 
There are two different methods which anglers pursue 
after a salmon has struck at and missed the cast. One is 
to keep right on whipping the pool with increasing speed 
and vigor; another more conservative plan is to wait a 
bit and give the big fellow a chance to settle down and 
compose himself after his first failure. For no matter 
how delicate the leader, no matter how sma 1 the hook, 
or how deftly the latter is dropped upon the water, a 
heavy salmon will often wait ten or even fifteen minutes, 
or perhaps all day, before making a second attempt. In 
my experience the waiting method has proved the more 
successful; and accordingly I sat impatiently on a rock 
for a period which seemed fully ten minutes, although 
it was only four, all the while reproaching myself for 
striking so hastily at the first rise. For hooking a salmon, 
especially if the water be swift, is a very different mat- 
ter from snubbing a trout or black bass. In fact, the 
former frequently hooks himself with no aid whatever 
from the angler; and it is very difficult for a trout fisher- 
man to moderate his sudden strike, or refrain from 
quickly jerking his rod as the great silvery fish rolls over 
the flies. So, keeping this in mind, I waded again into 
the stream and cast out from shore. He rose with that 
same slow motion, and sucking in my fly beneath the 
surface, hooked himself— this time with a sharp tug at 
the doctor. ..,,„•• i » 
No man on paper ever did full justice to a salmons 
powers, to his long rushes, and wild, erratic leaps. It 
was just forty-six minutes, one after another, of such 
thrilling movements as Henry Van Dyke so graphically 
describes in "Fisherman'.s Luck," with the big ouananiche 
at Grande Decharge. Dugmore, his face glued to the 
finder of the big Graflex, was all around the pool at once, 
Dressing the button at each critical moment as the fish 
leaped in the air. The latter we could plainly see in the 
shallow pool, tail up, head down, slowly working back 
and forth, to and fro, among the rocks on bottom, vainly 
searching out some protecting cranny or sharp ledge on 
which to cut the leader. Every few moments a feeling of 
dreadful uncertainty would seize me as the fish shook his 
body rapidly from side to side in his efforts to tear out 
the hook. Those quick pulsating tugs at the line, known 
to angling lore as "jigging," are familiar to all salmon 
fishermen; with me they always produce a momentary 
feeling of paralysis around the heart. But that little No. 
6 silver-doctor held well, and now those well known 
symptoms of exhaustion marked a fate that was soon to 
be sealed. His body rolled unsteadily, often belly up- 
ward in the water, his sharp dorsal fin cut the surface, 
and the broad tail flapped weakly enough as I reeled him 
in, and a moment later Jim's gaff threw him far up 
among the rocks on shore. It was the first salmon of the 
season, an even io-pounder, and the whole party joined in 
mutual congratulations. 
That was a good day, that first afternoon among the 
upper pools. • I killed another slightly smaller in the 
steady water, and later my friend took two good sized 
fish in the pool above, while I snapped the camera at 
him. Another wise old fellow jumped clear of the brook, 
and up among the stones on shore, only to flounder back 
and escape, while a sixth, a heavy fish, tore down stream 
like a runaway locomotive, snapped my leader around a 
rock, and then rushed back, jumping several times with 
the hook still fast in his jaw. 
Halcyon days were those among the upper pools. 
Warblers and titmice twittered among the spruces by 
day, and mosquitoes hummed us to sleep in the tent by 
night, but salmon were there in the brook only ten yards 
from camp ; not many, 'tis true, for the latter still proved 
discouragingly low, but our score for the rest of the week 
was sixteen, and we were satisfied. 
Every stream in Newfoundland — or, for that matter, in 
every land — is constantly changing from year to year, 
from month to month, even from day to day. The floods 
and freshets of early spring leave deep and lasting foot- 
prints in a river bed, in the sand and gravel of the bot- 
tom, in the contour of the beach, even high up on shore 
among bushes and tree trunks. Rocky points are torn 
away bodily and piled in confusion, as "gurry," and logs 
and huge ice cakes go crashing down the swollen torrent. 
Big boulders mysteriously change their positions from 
year to year ; sandbars are often scooped up entire and 
deposited perhaps in some favorite pool, where every 
summer salmon have been lurking for generations past. 
And what of the salmon? Why, perchance, they have 
discovered a new and better pool, only a few rods further 
up, where they will lie each season for generations to 
come, j ust as contentedly as in the old home, now covered 
by an avalanche of sand and stones. 
Three or four miles above camp, this is precisely what 
we found — a new pool in the shape of a circular basin, 
broad and shallow, scooped from the very river bed itself 
by the ice of previous spring freshets. It was well 
stocked with salmon, but so clear and transparent that 
only an odd one could be induced to strike; and, strange 
as it may seem, our luck was best during the midday 
hours. For four consecutive days not a fish rose before 
ten o'clock in the morning, and then merely in a half- 
hearted, listless way, only after endless casting and an 
infinite variety of flies had been tried. Of the latter, I 
trailed at least a dozen past the nose of one indifferent 
fish, finally inducing him to take the most unlikely one 
of all— a professor. At another time, after working for 
an hour over a reluctant salmon, he finally rose with a 
great swirl to a little Jock-Scott — the very fly with which 
I had started. A bright yellow-miller killed a good fish 
for Dugmore after the standard silver-doctor had been 
refused at least fifty times; and yet I am sure that not 
one in a thousand preferred a miller to> a doctor or a 
black-dose or half a dozen others. Strange, is it not, that 
salmon are so peculiar in their moods and appetites? It 
almost seemed as if they rose more out of sheer spite 
than for any other reason; or perhaps it was just to get 
rid of us — rid of those odd little flies that skipped so 
boldly and tantalizingly over the glassy surface. 
At the lower end of this new pool, called, in honor of 
its discoverer, William's Pool, was a rocky cove, and in 
the center of this cove a small fish of perhaps six pounds' 
weight lurked in the shadow of a flat rock. Every morn- 
ing he was at his post; regularly he rose with no uncer- 
tain intent, and, feeling the prick of the hook, beat a 
hasty retreat to his rock. This continued for four morn- 
ings in succession; but that fish's life seemed to be 
guarded by a divine providence, for every time he escaped. 
Once he missed the fly entirely, and remained absolutely 
indifferent for the rest of the day; twice he was slightly 
pricked, and yet a fourth time he retired from the fray, 
leaving me minus a little No. 8 dusty-miller. Each time 
he appeared as eager as ever for the fly, and seemed to 
have completely forgotten the experience of the previous 
day; but finally, just as we were about to leave, I hooked 
the wily fish. Fast to a No. 8 silver-doctor, with a four- 
ounce trout rod at the other end, it seemed at least like 
a thirty-minute proposition, for the grilse was as gamy 
and acrobatic as any in the river. Small salmon are 
always more active jumpers than heavy fish, and this 
one proved no exception to the rule. I counted seven 
genuine leaps, and as many splashes on the surface, but 
then, in a final desperate rush, my grilse did something 
which salmon rarely attempt in the shallower Newfound- 
land rivers. It was a master move, a well planned 
strategy worthy of success, and it certainly deserved a 
fate nobler than that offered by the hot fat of a frying- 
pan. Leaping a sharp ledge of rock at the outlet of the 
pool, and then plunging down a slight fall, he wriggled 
along among the scattered boulders of a shoal, and finally 
gaining steady water, deliberately swam under a project- 
ing bank, where, of course, the line caught in an over- 
hanging alder and the hook tore loose. The maneuver 
had succeeded, and my grilse had escaped, for now the 
cast hung helplessly tangled in the bushes. So I reeled 
up my line and walked over to the. alders for the pur- 
pose of detaching the flies; but on peering down, imagine 
my surprise to see Mr. Grilse calmly lying in the water, 
with his head poked in under the bank. He was still 
free, although in hiding, but a moment later Jim's gaff 
surprised him most unpleasantly. 
Half a mile above camp, about thirty fish waited for 
rain in the deep, dark waters of the Black Pool. I 
caught several on different days, but there was one of 
unusual interest, the largest of all, a veritable patriarch 
among salmon, that eluded all my efforts. Every day I 
used to watch him from the top of an overhanging 
boulder, always at his post lying far down among its 
black shadows. That fish had evidently run very early 
m the season, for his back was dark, and his sides a 
golden brown, while a broad crescent-shaped gash back 
of the head showed where a spear had struck and failed 
to kill. But all the wiles known to the gentle art; and 
all _ the flies in my book, were tried without success. 
Neither the feminine brilliancy of a Pannachenee-belle, 
nor the profound learning of a professor, nor the mystic 
charm of the infallible Jock-Scott, affected in the slightest 
degree his stolid indifference and candor. He was an 
educated fish, a fish possessing the discrimination born of 
a past experience, and only once, toward sundown, did he 
condescend to follow my fly, leaving a broad 'ripple in 
his wake. But it was merely a playful frolic, or perhaps 
he was making game of me. So at last, after four days 
of failure, I determined to try a bait. It was contrary to 
all angling traditions, and directly opposed to the ex- 
penence_ of many experts, who tell us that a salmon, will 
not eat in fresh water, but merely subsists upon his own 
fat, accumulated in salt water. Dr. Francis Day and 
other famous anglers have advanced the theory that a 
salmon rises to the fly merely through impulses of anger 
or in play. This theory certainly looks very plausible 
when, upon opening the fish, we usually .find its stomach 
as empty as a pocket; and they always lose several 
pounds in weight after a few months' visit in fresh 
water. How can thirty or forty great salmon find suffi- 
lcent sustenance for two or three weeks or even longer 
in a small, narrow pool not over four, feet deep? Many 
facts seem to uphold the theory, but nevertheless there is 
nothing in it that would prevent a hungry fish from seiz- 
ing a tempting bait if. dangled before his nose. At the 
Grande Decharge, on the headwaters of the Saguenay, the 
ouananiche, a fish barely distinguishable from the sea 
salmon, will take a cricket or grasshopper with the utmost 
relish; and it has long been well known that the salmon 
of European waters often stoops to a baited hook. 
So a small piece of trout was accordingly placed on 
a plain bare hook, and allowed to drift down with the 
current below the surface. Whirling around and around 
among the eddies, it safely passed the nose of my old 
friend, but a moment later, to my utter astonishment, 
the dainty morsel was eagerly seized by a 7-pounder, and 
the hook held. Later that fish paid the penalty of his in- 
discretion. Again and again I tried the experiment with- 
out success; but for once the theory was upset, and one 
fish in that pool, at least, fed in fresh water. 
Since writing the above, the following letter appeared 
in Forest and Stream, written by Mr. W. F. J. McCor- 
mick, of Biscayne Bay, Florida, a sportsman of broad 
knowledge and experience: "One thing I have learned 
conclusively and positively, and that is, that Salmo salar, 
the delicate aristocrat of the river, will stoop to bite at 
the plebian worm, a piece of fish, or common pork. I took 
a 12-pound fresh-run fish on a bunch of worms, stood by 
and saw a 2i-pounder killed with the same, and last Sun- 
day I took an 8-pound grilse on a piece of pork. Does 
not that upset the pet theory of their refusing food in 
fresh water?" At the time Mr. McCormick was fishing 
in Newfoundland. 
„ It would be a great pity for the bait-fisherman, with his 
plebian worms" and servile pork, to degrade the noble 
sport of fly-casting for salmon; and I sincerely hope that 
in the future no one will be more successful than were 
we, and that no trout or pork or grub or worm will ever 
again induce a salmon to rise in fresh water. 
It was now high time to be starting for the interior 
and the falls. My friend had already deoarted, and was 
speeding along the rails toward the great land to the 
southward. The fishing season was nearing its close, for 
already salmon and grilse were commencing to change 
from a brilliant silver to a dark golden hue. Even the 
feathered songsters around camp realized the waning of 
summer, for their early morning choruses had ceased, and 
the birds now skulked furtively among the bushes await- 
ing the passing of the August moult. For truly August 
is a silent season among the song birds— a season of ill 
luck and weaknesses; of silent, solitary mopings, only too 
often resulting in sickness or in death. During that brief 
period there is no surplus vitality for idle song; all their 
strength and vigor are required, for it is then that the old 
coat is discarded for a newer dress, another set of quills 
and pinions to be used on that long southern journey 
among the perils and dangers of the fall migration. So 
with some reluctance we left the big salmon still at his 
post among the shadows of the Black Pool, and shoulder- 
ing our packs, started off on a three days' journey to the 
headwaters of the river — and the falls. 
The _ Grand Fall is situated in the most delightful spot 
in which it has ever been my good fortune to pitch a 
camp. In the very center of a deep amphitheatre among 
surrounding hills, confined on all sides by almost per- 
pendicular granite walls, the river winds tortuously 
through the narrow chasm, and then plunges in a cataract 
of foam and spray forty feet into a pool below. Here 
the waters, deep and black, swirl in great eddies between 
two parallel walls of rock. 
About two o'clock on the afternoon of the third day, 
we wearily climbed the last hill below the falls, struggled 
through a mile or two of the thickest spruce tangle that 
ever tried a traveler's patience, and three hours later 
rested on the high boulders by the river's brink. Yes, 
salmon were there — a few, at any rate — down in the 
depths below ; for almost immediately a doughty little 
grilse, springing into the air, launched himself ten feet 
up into the foam, and then fell back into the pool beneath 
us. From our elevated position he seemed small and 
slender, indeed, far too insignificant for such a task, but 
his failure was only the signal for another and yet another 
unsuccessfully to try the ascent. It proved too great 
.an effort even for the prowess of a full-grown salmon, 
and during the next half hour several big fellows were 
washed down ignominiously among the rocks below 
whirled backward by tons of falling water. It was a 
plucky leap out into that torrent, that boiling cauldron 
of foam and spray, and must have sorely tried even a 
fish's nerves; but, nothing daunted, many of all sizes 
