Trouting on the R.io Grande 
By C. A. COOPER 
A Summer RaLmble With a Burro Train in the 
Rocky Mountains 
{Concluded from page 979.) 
S EPTEMBER had come and the cold nights 
brought reminders of a more congenial 
clime at a lower altitude as well as less 
agreeable ones of the homeward march soon 
to be begun. With a surprising patience we 
had reserved the best lake for the last, feel¬ 
ing certain that large trout could be found 
there for the homegoing. To our confusion 
we learned they did not respond readily to 
the fly. We knew them to be there; we 
could see great ' schools passing like flocks 
of passenger pigeons and some of them were 
too large to tell about. It is likely we might 
have taken enough with a fly, but as the big 
ones ignored it, we spent considerable time in 
trying different lures. At last we gave it up, 
contenting ourselves with some which ranged 
between two and five pounds, taken with small 
spoons and grasshoppers. Hope is a pretty good 
all-round remedy. It is probable we shall never 
see'that lake again, yet we persist in thinking 
that preserved minnows, or small trout, or mice, 
or chipmunks, or birds might have won and will 
yet prove successful. Only the other day I drop¬ 
ped a small mouse into a vial of alcohol. 
In returning to Jackson’s the exploring habit 
got us into trouble. We intended to go down 
the Flint Fork, strike across country to another 
branch of Pine River and thence across the 
range to Big Squaw Creek, an affluent of the 
Rio Grande. We expected to get to Jackson’s 
in two days and see a traditional big fish district 
on the way. 
Perhaps it is enough to say we spent two 
days in a cliff and cano’n country, frequently 
using the creek for a trail and climbing only 
to retrace our steps. To add to our misfortune, 
on the second night some prowler stole all our 
fish which had been spread on a canvas to cool. 
On the third day we crossed the divide and 
stumbled into the valley of Lower Squaw Creek, 
physically done up and mentally soured. We 
threw off the loads and decided to sleep under 
a tree on the edge of a little park. Putting up 
a tent was too much like work and we had not 
slept in the open yet, and it pays to keep on good 
terms with the stars. 
Is it or is it not strange that when the mind 
is occupied with pleasing thoughts the body for¬ 
gets to be tired ? It soon developed that we had 
discovered a garden of the gods, the forest 
primeval. We would call the next day the 
seventh, and rest in the orthodox fashion. We 
found there were no tin cans in our little park. 
no bottles, no sheep camps, no picket pins; there 
might be some only a mile away, but we would 
not look for them. 
As of old the deer came into the openings at 
sunset. On a distant, green slope a band of big¬ 
horns fed slowly toward the top. It was good 
to see and carried us back thirty-five years. It 
even transported us to the days when Pike, from 
a high hill in San Luis Valley, saw thousands 
of deer and antelope. We thought of Carson 
and Bridger and the old buffalo days and won¬ 
dered how many of the people of to-day would 
like to have lived at that time. That feeling of 
exhaustion had gone when we finally lay down 
for the night and we forgot to watch the stars. 
In the morning Ed went down the valley and 
killed some grouse. He did not want to disturb 
the game near camp. It reminded me of a man 
named Plall, in Middle Park, who had an elk 
lick near his cabin, which was three miles from 
the mountains. The elk would come to it from 
a point twelve miles distant to eat the pure clay 
and Hall would watch them from his cabin win¬ 
dow. When he needed meat he would go three 
miles back on their trail to intercept them at 
daylight. 
We did not like to leave that camp on the 
Little Squaw, but certain duties claimed atten¬ 
tion and therefore we could only feel thankful 
for the brief retrospect and ride away. Four 
miles below we came to a singular pool. Ed re¬ 
garded it as one of the wonders of the world 
and fully as interesting as the grave of the man 
at Pioche, Nevada, who had died with his boots 
off. 
Many years ago there had been a perpendicu¬ 
lar fall of thirty feet. In some way a twenty- 
foot well or crevice was made in the middle of 
the creek bottom fifteen feet above the brink 
which found an outlet in the face of the fall 
twenty feet below the brink. In time this right- 
angled passage grew to a diameter of eight feet 
and at low water received the whole volume of 
the creek. The falling water had excavated a 
cavern and formed a pool nearly twenty feet 
across, which now discharges at one side of the 
big hole in the face of the cliff directly into an¬ 
other pool eight feet below. Below this pool is 
still another extending beneath its confining 
walls. The surface of the middle pool is on a 
level with and in the center of a broad, exposed 
rock strata. 
We had discovered the place ten years before 
when looking for worlds to conquer. Beginning 
at the mouth of the stream we had fished a mile 
of most uninteresting water when we came to 
a deep pool extending from wall to wall. Find¬ 
ing some good fish there, we climbed eight hun¬ 
dred feet to the top and descended above the 
pool only to find another impinging upon both 
sides. 
The next day we began at a still higher point 
and after a half mile of first class fishing, came 
to the hole in the wall which, from a distance, 
resembles a bear’s den more than a trout pool. 
I climbed to and sat upon the narrow restrain¬ 
ing wall. It was a gloomy looking place, twenty 
feet in extent, and the water was deep and dark 
on one side. Being only a foot above its sur¬ 
face and in plain sight of every fish it might 
contain, I protestingly made a cast with three 
feet of line. Many fish wanted that coachman 
and one got it. My insecure station made it 
necessary to bring him to the overflow, drop 
him over the falls to the pool below, and then 
lead him to where Ed was w'aiting with a land¬ 
ing net. I did this with one hand while holding 
to the wall wdth the other. He w’eighed twelve 
ounces and there were si.xty more like him which 
were taken at four different times. 
This seemed like a good time to stock the 
stream above the falls, something we had often 
thought of doing, so Ed dangled an hour for 
six fish wfflich I carried to a pool above. Though 
the act of conscience-stricken mortals, Peter may 
give us credit for it in his big book. How the 
fish get into that upper pool is something of a 
mr'stery. It is probably done in seasons of very 
high water, or possibly they come from above 
where we did not test it thoroughly because of 
the high fall into the cavern. 
Favorable letters at Jackson’s made a longer 
stay possible; we therefore concluded to rest for 
several dar's, doing a little desultory fishing for 
exercise until we should want seme fish to take 
home. 
On the first day I became convinced of the 
fact that fish have eyes, and if anyone tells me 
they can reason better than a dog or a man, I 
shall not dispute him. It was cold and very 
windy, and as I walked along swarms of grass¬ 
hoppers arose, many being carried over the 
water. Those falling into the deep water, near 
the four-foot bank I was walking on, were in¬ 
stantly snapped up by large trout. Unfortu¬ 
nately I had no mist-colored leaders, but attach¬ 
ing a No. 10 hook to a fine white one, I dropped 
a hopper wherever a trout showed his head. In 
order that some of them might strike the water 
in a natural manner, I hooked them in every 
conceivable way, always concealing the hook. 
The result was invariably the same; the trout 
would start after them with a rush, slowing 
gradually as they approached, and when a foot 
away decide they were not hungry. 
On another occasion the whimsical nature of 
the trout was revealed to me by an old angler 
who had come thirty miles for one day’s fishing. 
The time was Sept. 19, which means cold nights 
at an altitude of 9.000 feet, and distrust on the 
part of the trout of summer flies and their imi- 
