372 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 23, 1912 
Angling in the Cascades 
By SAMUEL DIKE HOOPER 
C ASTING a fly is, for me, a comparatively 
recent accomplishment. I took it up for 
much the same reason that I did the study 
of arithmetic as a school boy, because force of 
circumstances proved too strong for my powers 
of resistance. In this case the circumstances 
were that the river, running within a few feet 
of our cabin, bid fair to teem with trout, and 
we were fish hungry. 
Thus it happened that early spring found me 
casting, with ill grace ’tis true, but casting never¬ 
theless. I usually started by making sundry un¬ 
complimentary remarks about “dainty tackle 
only fit for ladies to fool with,” and requests, 
addressed to no one in particular, to give me 
a cod line and a good dory off the dear old 
Maine coast. Then I girded myself with a creel 
into which, just as a matter of form, I put some 
nice damp moss, and thus prepared I fished 
till dark. 
This persistence was ultimately rewarded. I 
caught a fair sized trout and a fingerling which 
I threw back. How I landed them I do not 
know, but I have a distinct recollection of an 
awful tangle at the finish and a triumphant 
march home with the trout. 
By this time I was an enthusiast and fished al¬ 
most dail}' throughout the season, with varying 
success. During the first month a casual ob¬ 
server might have entertained considerable doubt 
as to whether I was angling for birds or fish. 
I left at least a dozen professors hung to high 
branches along a quarter mile stretch of river 
bank. 
One afternoon early in the season, when the 
river was still rather too cold to wade, I cau¬ 
tiously pushed aside the brush at the foot of a 
beautiful riffle just above the cabin. Making 
a low side cast beneath the large alders I drop¬ 
ped a professor in the lower end of the riffle, 
allowing it to drift into a small eddy on the 
further side. Like a flash, a beautiful trout 
showed his gleaming red sides to the setting 
sun and vanished. My strike was a fraction of 
a second too late to hook him. In spite of the 
theory advanced by old fishermen that no large 
Blue River trout would strike twice the same 
afternoon, I ran every bluff I knew on this old 
gray beard, but he had tasted one iron-lined bug 
and had food for thought if not for body. I 
finally left the riffle with considerable respect 
for the sagacity of redsides in general, and one 
in particular, and a firm determination that our 
acquaintance should not end there. 
1 politely offered this same trout a queen of 
the water a few days later. He let it drift past 
his pet eddy, only to hit it hard a second later. 
He took it as he rose, and I hooked him in 
good shape. Down he went like a streak, mak¬ 
ing my reel fairly hum; then turning, he tore 
against the swift current. This additional strain 
was too much for him. I felt him weaken a 
trifle, and slowly began to reel him in. He gave 
me about three feet of line, but I could not 
budge him another inch. The tackle would not 
stand another ounce. I kept the strain for a 
few moments. The pull was as steady as though 
1 had hooked bottom, yet I had seen the trout. 
I slackened the line the least bit, but not a move 
from the other end. Suddenly I realized that 
whatever I had originally hooked, there was 
nothing animate on the other end of the line. 
Investigation, which involved a soaking to the 
waist in that mountain torrent, disclosed my 
hook fast in a fallen cedar. 
I haunted that riffle until one morning I hook¬ 
ed that trout at the first cast with a professor. 
Imagine my disgust to have him zig-zag right 
in, not putting up near the fight of a ten-inch 
speckled trout. He measured fifteen inches and 
was the largest redsides I ever pulled out of 
Blue River, though much larger ones have been 
taken. 
Many an afternoon I waded the river for two 
miles without landing anything. As I rounded 
the bend by the cabin. Budge would run out on 
the piazza and call down to know the size of 
my catch. Like the proverbial small boy I was 
loth to admit defeat, and would often answer 
the question as he did: “When I catch this one 
and two more. I’ll have three.” Then I would 
try the riffle in front of the cabin, and there I 
would usually redeem myself. I have crawled 
out of the river as late as half-past eight in the 
evening on occasions, tired, wet, hungry, and 
with nothing to show for the afternoon’s work 
but a ruffled disposition. It would not be so 
bad to come home to a hotel or camp with an 
empty creel, but when you and your better half 
have been eating bacon all winter, it sort of 
knocks the romance out of “fisherman’s luck.” 
“Overland trout” is all right now and then, 
when a varied menu is available, but it grows 
monotonous in the spring, when it has been your 
mainstay since fall. About this time redsides 
are vastly preferable to “hogsides” to our way 
of thinking. 
At the foot of the falls there is a deep pool 
in the bed rock about forty by twenty feet. 
Even in the driest season the water is churned 
into foam much like the wake of a small steamer. 
Along the edges, however, there are a few little 
crevices in the rock where the water is clear 
and comparatively quiet. It was into one of 
these quiet places that I had been casting with¬ 
out success when it occurred to me that perhaps 
the fish had grown too lazy to rise because of 
the abundance of food coming over the falls 
and eddying about the pool before their very 
noses. Accordingly I took the ugliest looking 
fly I ever saw and baited it. Unsportsmanlike, 
yes; but I was hungry, remember that. 
The vivid red and yellow Maginty with the 
tempting morsel hooked on behind must have 
created a sensation as it swept under. I gave 
it line enough to drift around fishville at ran¬ 
dom. Suddenly I saw my line begin to cut the 
foam, and without waiting, I gave a quick, but 
gentle pull. 
My reel began to sing as the fish went down. 
As luck would have it, I was using a spare set 
of tackle which had been patched that afternoon, 
and it did not look like policy to try to stop the 
runaway, particularly when the bottom was 
bound to do so soon enough. He did not stop 
long on bottom, however, but was up like a 
flash and away to the other end of the pool, 
then back as quickly, right under the falls. As 
A SULLIVAN COUNTY TROUT STREAM. 
Photograpli by Harry B. Zabriskie. 
