Jan. 24, 1914. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
109 
The Brown Trout of the Yaqui 
By CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER 
Author of “ The Game Fishes of the World,” Recreation of a Sportsman,” etc. 
I T is extremely difficult to get away from Cali¬ 
fornia ' in the Angling season; there are so 
many piscatorial diversions and icthyological 
allurements, and everyone is coming to Cali¬ 
fornia. The tuna are biting, or the sword fish 
have arrived, or the trout season is a good and 
robust one, are but a few reasons, but this time I 
was diverted by a note from Major Frederick R. 
Burnham, the hero of the Matabele war and 
many other occasions, who held out the lure of 
a virgin field for anglers down in Sonora. About 
this time some one sent me a monograph on a 
new trout of the Rio Yaqui, the Major also 
promised to take me down to the coast of the 
Gulf of California, so between them I again de¬ 
ferred the great trip or postponed it and left for 
the west coast of Mexico with the Major. I 
had known him for twenty-six years. He took 
me down into the wonderful Yaqui valley about 
•one hundred miles south of Guaymas to the land 
of green parrots where everything is green and 
where the most wonderful cactus forest in the 
world can be seen side by side by American 
farms miles in extent, the hope and fulfilled 
promise of the people. We made our headquar¬ 
ters at Esperanza and sending a boat down to 
the coast sixty miles by mule team followed in 
a motor car and in a few days with a Yaqui 
runner and two Mexicans were camped on the 
beach of an inlet of Tobari bay on the Gulf. 
We slept on a gigantic Oyster heap piled up in 
thousands of years by the ancients and the liv¬ 
ing bed was hardly of the sweetest oyster I 
ever ate, green turtles swam about in the lagoon, 
and up and down the beach paraded the most 
extraordinary variety of waterfowl I had ever 
dreamed of outside of Florida previous to 1870. 
I had but to raise my head from the saddle I 
used as a pillow to see them not fifty feet away, 
while the mud flats everywhere were dotted with 
birds of all kinds and descriptions—snipe, curlew, 
sand pipers, herons, cranes. In the night 
coyotes tried to stampede our mules and sang 
their yelping lay. 
In the morning we went out into the bay 
and I rigged a light rod and trolled for white 
sea bass and had one hooked at once that gave 
me a gallant fight, rushing in and out, now 
around in great circles while the Yaqui pulled 
the light boat around, enabling me to bring it 
to gaff with safety. Some of the bass here run 
up to one hundred pounds and afford magnifi¬ 
cent sport, especially up by Tiburon Island and 
along the coast even nearer the delta of the 
Colorado. Here was the fantastic Rooster fish 
with its long dorsal fins, the Black Sea Bass, a 
monster of five hundred pounds, while Tuna 
and the giant Ray added to the possibilities. An 
angling acquaintance I was to meet near here a 
season previous with Gifford Pinchot landed one 
of these rays so large that it required the sixty ton 
yacht to drag it from the bottom, yet it was 
killed, hauled ashore, and measured, a diabolical 
creature in appearance and habit. After we had 
caught sufficient fish we pulled over to the outer 
shore and landed. The vegetation was strange 
and stunted. Curious trees that crept along the 
beach like reptiles with bark so like paper you 
could roll cigarettes with it, piles of oyster 
shells, and here and there stone implements 
telling that the ancients had once lived on the 
fat of the land here. 
It was difficult to keep your eyes or attention 
from the birds, man of war hawks, gulls, peli¬ 
cans and long lines of roseate spoon bills going 
up and down or forming a vivid patch on the 
mud flats. In the center of the Island I found 
the trail of a Jaguar so fresh that I began to 
look for the animal, but he had probably been 
there the night previous. Coyotes I could hear 
now and then and over all a dim rumbling in¬ 
cessant sound from far away, the beating of the 
sea on the outer shore of the Gulf of California. 
I once lived on a small island of not over 
thirteen acres on the Gulf of Mexico sixty miles 
beyond Key West, but I never felt the sense of 
isolation more than out on their weird island of 
Mexico, that is destined soon to become a port 
and a large and influential town, a feeder of the 
whole Yaqui Valley with its system of canals 
and irrigation. We walked over to the west side 
and suddenly came to a little lake or aim of the 
sea a hundred feet below us, a picture of perfect 
and placid beauty. I named it on the spur of 
the moment for my distinguished companion 
and we stood there a long time taking in its 
charms of color and contrasts and in our mind’s 
eye seeing it in the not distant future filled with 
boats and all the appurtenances of a sea port 
town. 
The motor roads were of the best all over the 
valley and we visited a number of old Mexican 
towns, which can be found on the oldest maps, 
Ontagota, Fundicion and many more. All now 
the center of farming interests as the soil here 
has been found to be marvelously rich and every¬ 
thing is being grown from oranges to tomatoes 
by the hundred acres. If Mexico acquires peace, 
as it soon will, this region just south of Arizona 
will become the truck garden of the west and 
south. Astute Americans and Englishmen are 
buying ranches and farms and preparing to 
supply the demands of the adjacent regions. I 
went to Sonora to hunt and fish but I could 
have remained to study and enjoy the marvelous 
economic and agricultural problems that are being 
worked out here by Americans. Here one can 
see the birth of a new empire and where the 
farmer and the fruit raiser is the king. Back 
to Esperanza we motored, now in the open 
country again plunging into the cactus forest 
through which the road wound displaying 
splendid columns forty or fifty feet high, species 
and variety changing almost at every turn, a 
most fascinating country. Occasionally we 
stopped and I wandered into this extraordinary 
maze that farmers are digging up to plant 
tomatoes or garbanzas. 
The following day we went up the Rio 
Yaqui to try the trout and at the bridge I crossed 
the little river and began to cast down stream. 
The river was aboult the size of the Tweed in 
Scotland where the salmon are biting, but later 
on it was a Hudson in its volume. A young 
engineer had joined us and as we stood looking at 
the Yaquis on the opposite bank I had a strike, 
lost, then fouled my hook. I was using a little 
six ounce split bamboo and it had its limitations 
and I knew them. I was trying to decide to go 
in after the spoon when the engineer gave a 
shout, and I saw that one of the Yuaqui squaws 
who was washing clothes and drying them on a 
tripod over her head, was lying half in the 
water. This mermaid was the object of the 
engineer’s attention. He called her again when 
forthwith she plunged into the channel and ^wam 
over. I saw the end of my fishing here, but this 
was at least a diversion. She swam the swift 
current, came partly out and stood in a ques¬ 
tioning attitude while the engineer informed her 
in Spanish Yaqui that the American had fiooked 
a crocodile or a root and wanted her (for a con¬ 
sideration) to rescue the spoon. My companion's 
Spanish was at first not equal to the situation 
so we coaxed the mermaid in nearer and I man¬ 
aged to make her take the line and follow it 
out. This she did after a while, then went down 
out of sight and brought up the spoon. Whether 
it was the force of habit, or whether the appari¬ 
tion of a not unattractive maiden who matched 
in color the muddy chocolate water, I cannot 
say, but I suddenly thought of the new brown 
trout described in the pamphlet of the Smith¬ 
sonian or the National Museum, brought a little 
pressure on the resilient rod, and presto, hooked 
the squaw’s dress at the very moment she plunged 
into the channel to return. For a moment she 
did not know she was hooked, then finding that 
she was not making any headway, she looked 
back, saw the line and turned. I could have 
played her with that delicate rod as well as a 
brown trout; at least I think I could have pre¬ 
vented her from landing. 
In any event she gave up and I reeled as 
she came in and literally brought her to the net 
or to within twenty feet of our party laughing 
at the joke, laughing still more at the dos pesos 
I tossed her. She did not resemble the trout 
described in the government monograph, but 1 
still believe I landed the only real brown trout 
of the Yaqui. 
We had a photographer in our party who 
amused himself taking pictures of the various 
stages of this play, and he followed her over to 
the flat rocks where she was lying like a fish in 
the water rubbing her clothes on the rocks and 
hanging them on the tripod over her. 
She was an alluring Yaqui mermaid, but for 
every pose, she made this unfortunate photogra¬ 
pher stand and deliver the coin of the realm. 
This was not very satisfactory fishing one 
may say, still it had its excitements, and few 
anglers have played a real nereid; most of them 
are played and lured on to the rocks in the Etru- 
rean or some other sea. 
“In Gulfs enchanted where the siren sings, 
and coral reefs lie bare,” but I landed the game, 
brought back my spoon and I still have it. 
“Good for giant Albicore, 
Off the coast of Magador, 
Good for salmon, think of that! 
Good for herring whiting sprat!” 
A rancher has applied for the rental of 320 
acres on the Pike national forest, Colorado, to 
be used in connection with other private land, 
for raising elk as a commercial venture. 
The government has just sold 43,000 cords 
of cedar wood for shingles from the Washington 
national forest. The shingles manufactured from 
this wood, laid six inches to the weather, would 
cover 2V2. square miles of roof. 
