AUGUST, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
347 
ANGLING WITH THE BARK ON 
THE RAINBOW TROUT IS THE ARISTOCRATIC BUCCANEER OF BIG WATERS 
AND FISHING FOR HIM IN BOILING 1WHIRLPOOLS IS THRILLING SPORT 
By CARL SCHURZ SHAFER 
C ERTAIN intimate acquaintances of 
mine maintain that since the ad- 
vent of January 16th, 1921, there 
has been a remarkable revival of pis- 
catorial interest in the Atlantic salmon 
as a game fish. Whether their judg- 
ment is founded upon sound logic and 
first hand information, or is inspired 
by the number of north bound automo- 
biles encountered upon the roads these 
days I have no means of determining, 
however, I am prepared to admit that 
salmon fishing is a great sport, par- 
ticularly for bank presidents and rail- 
road passenger agents. 
With the exception of a few sections 
of Maine, close enough to the St. Law- 
rence river to insure an annual percip- 
itation equivalent to a seven inch snow 
fall, American salmon fishing has been 
largely confined to the remote regions of 
Canada for a number of years. Prior 
to the war you could enjoy a week’s 
outing on a popular Canadian salmon 
river for approximately $222.37, but 
since the purchasing power of the al- 
mighty dollar has lost both stability 
and reliability the only notable fluc- 
tuation in the price of this thrilling 
pastime has been upward, until it takes 
at least $972.99 to enjoy a week of old 
fashioned salmon fishing with an aborig- 
inal smoke-tanned native of the primi- 
tive wilderness. The reason why I do 
so little salmon 
fishing is obvious 
There are those 
so reckless as to 
maintain that it 
is worth a thou- 
sand dollars of 
any man’s money 
to land a first 
class fighting sal- 
mon in the pink 
of condition, but 
then I have 
known anglers to 
eat carp and call 
them a table fish, 
which reminds me 
that some day I 
propose to take a 
long pole with a 
suitable three 
tined contrivance 
on its end and 
catch a good size 
carp. Once it is 
safe in my posses- 
sion and deprived 
of its scales and 
digestive utensils 
it is my intention to smoke it a 
delicate haddie brown and determine 
its caloric value as an imitation of the 
delectable smoked sturgeon which was 
a dinner pail staple when I was a boy. 
If I succeed I will have created some- 
thing out of nothing and the glory of 
achievement and discovery should at 
least entitle me to a place of equal 
rank in history with the blind genius 
who made a whistle out of a pig’s 
tail just to prove that it could be 
done. 
W HEN I want a little “angling with 
the bark on” I immediately set 
out in quest of the salmon’s only 
rival, the rainbow, big chief of the 
trout tribe and the family’s only scrap- 
per entitled to wear a heavy-weight 
championship belt; not that there are 
no lightweights, featherweights and 
bantams, because the whole family is 
all punch and pepper so far as I have 
been able to discover. Weight consid- 
ered they demonstrate unmistakable 
evidence of the family’s pugnacious in- 
heritance, regardless of size. Person- 
ally I prefer to catch the big ones be- 
cause they have a heavy-weight wal- 
lop and can furnish more entertainment. 
It has been charged, and perhaps 
with good reason that in the warm 
waters of his native lowlands west of 
the Sierras and Cascades the rainbow 
is inclined to weight and to a phil- 
osophical acceptance of the inevitable 
when hooked. I am not prepared to 
refute the alligation, but so far as my 
experience goes I am quite positive 
that, transplanted to the colder streams 
of the higher altitudes in the middle 
west and east, he loses the lethargic 
inheritance of his glorious natal cli- 
mate, and, like the lithe, bronzed cow- 
boy hero of romantic western fiction, 
he becomes a cool, capable fighter when 
roused to action. 
For many years I esteemed the sal- 
mon as the greatest of fresh water 
game fish, but I have been reluctantly 
forced to the conclusion that the angler 
who has yet to bring to the net a big 
rainbow in a stretch of wild, swift, 
roaring water, lashed white with the 
spume and spindle of a rock-strewn 
river bed, has not reached the zenith 
of his angling career. 
The rainbow with his glistening sil- 
ver sides, delicately stripped by an ir- 
idescent band of watermelon pink, 
which marks the dividing line between 
a white belly, and a chilly, cold, steel 
blue back, with a skin plentifully sprin- 
kled with little black dots suggestive 
of a preponderance of black heads, is 
our one conspicuous example of the suc- 
cessful transplanting of a species. His 
length is four 
times his depth, 
so you see a 
twenty inch fish 
only draws five 
inches of water, 
and can negotiate 
fairly shallow 
streams without 
incurring, stone 
bruises in case of 
necessity, at a 
speed comparable 
to that of a hound 
dog with an ex- 
tomato can at- 
tached to his ap- 
pendage. 
In habit the 
rainbow has little 
in common with 
his more beauti- 
ful cousin, the 
brook trout. The 
latter is exactly 
what his name 
implies — a crea- 
ture of cold brooks 
and little singing 
In such vortical tumult of racing waters lurks the rainbow 
