364 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 23, 1912 
The Fever and Its Treatment 
By ROBERT STEEL 
1 WONDER sometimes whence it comes—that 
strange, indefinable longing for the open 
places, half-soothing, half-disturbing, which 
grows and grows in the hearts of fishermen as 
winter loosens his icy grip on streams and 
meadow and hastens northward before advanc¬ 
ing spring. Is it partly physical—a sort of in¬ 
voluntary rousing of the human 
system in response to the chang¬ 
ing season, somewhat as plants 
begin to grow and all wild life 
becomes more active with the ad¬ 
vent of balmier days? Or is it 
purely psychic—a remnant, per¬ 
haps, of some inherited instinct 
which prompted our prehistoric 
ancestors to issue from their 
caves when spring had come, 
hitch up their teams of bronto- 
sori, and “go fishin’ ?” 
But whatever may be its cause 
or character, you know the sen¬ 
sation to which I refer, and how 
restless it makes you feel until 
you can get out and poke along 
the brook, among the alder bushes 
and past the swampy places 
where the red and yellow hoods 
of the skunk cabbage push up 
through the mud. 
It doesn’t have to be a big 
stream to serve this purpose (I've 
known an ordinary roadside gut¬ 
ter full of March rain water to 
lure an old fisherman two blocks 
out of his way just that he might 
walk along beside it), nor one 
with a far-reaching reputation for 
trout. The ideal size is just 
about that of your favorite brook 
—the one whose course you can 
trace mentally any evening as you 
sit and toast before the open fire 
in the library. It should be a live 
stream, one with little rapids and 
falls perhaps, and deep, still pools 
that mirror the overhanging trees 
and the blending colors of the 
sunset sky. And if it contains 
trout as well, why, then-- 
***** 
The dry-fly artist sat slumped ‘down in the 
seat of the swiftly moving train, gazing far 
across wide leagues of treeless ’ flats toward 
where the sun was sinking in a haze of won¬ 
drous pinks. For long weeks the marshes had 
lain locked in fetters of snow and ice, but now 
at last, among the patches of winter-worn cat¬ 
tails and meadow grass beside the track, little 
points of green thrusting up from the sodden 
ground told of the annual awakening of growing 
things. Far to the westward a range of hills 
showed dimly purple in the failing light, and be¬ 
yond them the soft calm of the spring evening. 
“Why so thoughtful. Master-hand?” I queried, 
taking the vacant place beside the lonely figure. 
“Have you, too, got the fever?” 
“That’s the trouble,” he answered, turning 
quickly. “And I’ve been figuring out whether 
I can get away for a day to catch a few trout 
and sort of lower my temperature a little. I 
suppose it’s too early for them to take flies, but 
I guess paraffin oil and eyed hooks haven't 
made me forget how to drown worms. As 
things look now. I’ll have that insurance case 
“just about the size of your favorite brook.” 
Photograph by F. F. Sornberger. 
wound up before the end of the week, and if it 
is. I'm going to try Taylor’s Brook on Satur¬ 
day. Will you go?” 
Of course I promised; how was it possible 
to do otherwise, especially at that time of year? 
So there was much digging of flower beds for 
the next two evenings, and when we started 
early on the appointed morning we had enough 
garden hackles to furnish a five-course dinner 
to all the trout in the State. 
I’ll not attempt to tell you just where Taylor’s 
Brook is, for the way to it winds in and out 
among the hills of Southern New York in a 
really bewildering manner. But if, some sunny 
morning in late April or early May, you should 
take the right train and get off. at the right 
station and ask the local liveryman to drive 
you to Jake’s farm, you'll find a stream that 
any modest trout fisherman ought to be proud 
to know. 
The Taylor farmhouse stands at the top^ of 
a long slope of pasture-land and rye fields, and 
from it a path leads past the rambling old barns 
and outbuildings, over a stile whose heavy 
wooden steps are worn into hollows by many 
passing feet, and continuing through the rugged 
orchard of Baldwins, summer boughs and pip¬ 
pins, comes at last to the edge of a deep, heav¬ 
ily wooded glen. There it seems to hesitate, 
turns first to the right and then to the left, and 
finally, as if it had just been told 
the way to go, plunges down the 
slope among the hemlocks and 
scattered laurel bushes. As you 
clamber down, watching your 
footing carefully on the slippery 
carpet of dead needles, the mur¬ 
mur of the stream below grows 
louder until, turning a corner 
around a huge gray boulder, you 
come upon an old log bridge and 
Taylor’s Brook slipping along be¬ 
neath it. 
When we reached the little 
bridge the sun was perhaps two 
hours high, but in that narrow 
gorge the brook still lay in 
shadow. A hundred yards down 
stream the steep banks fell away 
abruptly and gave a glimpse of 
rich fields of freshly plowed land, 
across which, far in the distance, 
slowly plodded a farmer and his 
team. But above the bridge the 
brook became more precipitous, 
dashing from fall to pool and 
from pool to rapid through a per¬ 
fect trout paradise, and thither 
we turned, for that way lay the 
best of the fishing. 
It was a perfect morning, and 
as we worked upward along the 
stream, the air became steadily 
milder. Crows and jays called 
from the tops of the hemlocks, 
nuthatches clambered about on 
the tree trunks or paused head 
downward to stare at us curious¬ 
ly, and from a dead hickory at 
the edge of the glen a flicker 
“laughed” merrily again and 
again, as if he wanted to tell 
everybody how glad he was that 
winter was over. 
Yet despite the ideal conditions, the fish did 
not seem to be in biting humor. The most 
promising pools were carefully worked without 
success, though the dry-fly artist is a past 
master with bait as well as flies. Indeed, it 
was not until we had covered a good quarter of 
a mile of water and reached the upper end of 
the gorge, that anything of legal size came to 
our creels. 
At that point the brook leaves the woods and 
enters a little clearing where, years ago, a grist 
mill stood. The mill is now but a jumble of 
broken stones and rotted timbers, and the dam 
which backed up the water for the great wheel 
has been carried away by the freshets, leaving 
a magnificent pool at the foot of the old 
tail-race. 
