Forest and Stream 
Vol. LXXXII. 
April 18, 1914 
7 \ 
( 01914 j 
No. 16 
The Mystery of Trout 
ng 
Many Arts and Crafts Required for Success—A Deserted Mine Becomes a Preserve Yielding Golden Treasures 
T HE most casual Forest and Stream reader is 
aware that it is not quite all of trout fish¬ 
ing to catch trout. This point will be ad¬ 
mitted also by the angler who always brings 
home his game beauties and elicits from half- 
envious brothers the remark: “That fellow could 
find trout in a mud puddle after any big rain.” 
Men and women who 
have not yet acquired le feu 
sacre of this high degree in 
Forest Freemasonry wonder 
what it is that drags men of 
sixty from their comfort¬ 
able beds at four o’clock in 
the morning, and induces 
them to spend an entire day 
wading and floundering 
about in rough mountain 
streams, often going with¬ 
out proper food, and re¬ 
turning at night footsore, 
sunburned and weary, yet 
happy in the possession of, 
say, half a dozen little fish 
among the ferns and leaves 
in their baskets. 
As in professional life, so 
in trout fishing, the unex¬ 
pected is liable to happen at 
any moment. And it is no 
wonder that in the search 
for his “Golden Fleece” our 
modern Jason is led up and down that smiling 
“Little River” whose babbling waters seem to say: 
“The big trout are here. Work hard and one will 
take your fly, some day. But you must find them 
yourself, my son.” 
One of the mysteries of trout fishing is that 
“High Hook” or record members of the craft 
usually belong to one of two classes—the young 
and very inexperienced of both sexes, and the 
veteran gray-haired angler, and, unless the urchin 
has his successful fight with a monster trout in 
his very “pin hook days,” he rarely arrives at the 
goal of his ambition until late in life. 
Angling for brook trout makes for alertness. 
The eye must take in every foot of the stream 
and be ever watchful for rising fish. The neces¬ 
sity for balancing oneself upon a small rock and 
casting for many yards in all directions or cross¬ 
ing a deep place on a slippery log, makes one as 
well poised and self-reliant as a tight-rope walker. 
By Peter Flint. 
The sport is good training also for the still-hunter 
of grouse and deer, for the moment that any 
“let up” occurs in one’s self-discipline in the 
latter sport, just then the opportunity usually pre¬ 
sents itself to the tired hunter to retrieve a whole 
day’s blunders and misfortunes, in a second of 
time. So it is in trout fishing. 
It has been the writer's invariable good fortune 
thus far to have captured single-handed and 
alone all the piscatorial prizes that have fairly 
presented themselves to him during many years of 
angling, in the shape of brook trout, pike and 
bass. This is not asserted boastfully, but as evi¬ 
dence of the value of early training received from 
“the old men of the tribe,” to which instruction 
he has seriously bent his mind when in pursuit 
of game. These lectures have been delivered by 
sportsmen sitting in fashionable city clubs and 
private residences, as well as by rough yet kind- 
hearted farmers, leaning for a moment against 
the plough handles while the weary horses rested, 
and from guides and Indians smoking about the 
camp-fires after a day’s hunt. 
An instance of the costliness of a “suspension 
of the rules” almost forces itself into this story 
at this point. “True” and I were fishing lately 
in the Branch section of the Blue Ridge, in Essex 
county (for we have a Blue Ridge as well as 
Tennessee), a famous place for taking brook 
trout, there being scores of streams and ponds 
in every direction for several miles. We had 
hopped and leaped from boulder to boulder along 
the bed of a big mountain 
torrent for about two miles 
with indifferent success, 
as the water had been 
“whipped to death” on ac¬ 
count of its nearness to the 
main automobile and stage 
highway leading from Lake 
Champlain at Port Henry 
to famous Long Lake, in 
Hamilton county. I can see 
to-day that tremendous 
earth-edged gully reaching 
upward for one hundred 
feet or more to the left as 
we came down stream. Its 
sides had been grooved 
straight down by the high 
waters, and much resem¬ 
bled a great hay-mow cut 
down with a farmer’s hay- 
knife. The stream flowed 
swiftly over a shelving rock 
for fifty feet and emptied 
into a great swimming-hole 
shaded by big trees and overhanging rocks. 
Some mysterious influence made me caution 
my friend before making any offering to the 
possible occupant of that likely pool. “True,” for 
once, was most certainly careless. He shouted 
“Nothin’ doin’,” and cast a hook baited with an 
angle worm just above a patch of foam. What 
happened will never be forgotten by the writer. 
An enormous brook trout that could not possibly 
have weighed an ounce less than five pounds 
seized that bait and jerked the pole from the 
extended hand of my startled companion, nearly 
pulling him in after it down the shute. I was 
then about fifty feet behind and could be of no 
immediate service. Down the rocks scrambled 
the angler after his now emerging rod, which 
he seized and lifted up in an attempt to beach 
that monster, disregarding my frantic appeals to 
“fight him in the hole,” for I saw at a glance that 
“True” had no reel to aid in the struggle, in case 
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