VOL. LXXXVI 
MAY, 1916 
No. 5 
BIG INHABITANT OF THE LITTLE MAGALLOWAY 
HE WAS WISE AND KNOWING AND HAD ELUDED NEARLY EVERY THING IN THE 
BOOK BUT THE TAIL FLY—A PARMACHEENE BELLE PROVED HIS FINAL UNDOING 
By R. M. Kaufman. 
J ANUARY i, 1915. Resolved: To catch this 
year, with the artificial fly, a brook trout 
weighing three pounds or more. This reso¬ 
lution, if not actually written on any calendar or 
in any diary, had been in my mind for years. 
Each succeeding season had seen it sadly carried 
forward unaccomplished. It’s “scratched off” 
now, though. Last September I did it, and the 
pleasure involved was exactly proportionate to 
the time spent in anticipation, as is usually the case. 
Theretofore I had been compelled to solace my¬ 
self with numbers, and not such staggering num¬ 
bers, either. Most of my fishing had been in a 
locality in Northern New Hampshire where Sal- 
vclinus Fontinalis was fairly numerous and, of 
course, gamy, but a pounder was all one could 
hope for, and a half-pounder, even, something 
to be shown around. On trips into the woods 
nothing so large as one and three-quarters 
pounds had come my way. Once I had lost a 
trout that both my companion and myself had 
good reason to estimate at two and one-half 
pounds. Those I had taken were caught mostly 
with the fly, to casting which I had been accus¬ 
tomed since early boyhood, and I felt that I had 
sufficient experience both with dry and wet meth¬ 
ods to be ready for the opportunity when it 
should come. 
I had become tired of explaining to home¬ 
town anglers every fall, who condoled with me 
and, at the same time, told of three pounders 
and better taken in Allegash Lake, the Range- 
leys, the Nepigon and other famous streams, that 
the trout with whom my lot was cast ran small. 
I always felt rather apologetic about it, and al¬ 
though putting a brave face on the matter, se¬ 
The Little Magalloway Is Full of Specimens 
Like This, But Read About the Daddy 
of Them All. 
cretly my soul yearned for something to tell 
about; perhaps to show. 
Perhaps I had better tell now the detail that is 
coyly omitted, usually, until the tale of the strug¬ 
gle is recited—his weight. I don’t want anyone 
to become unduly excited. He went a shade bet¬ 
ter than four pounds—so close that I prefer to 
call him a four pounder—and all one September 
day he was a conspicuous feature of a pool in 
the Little Magalloway River in Northwestern 
Maine. He may have been a feature for several 
days previous; I cannot tell. But all one day I 
watched and listened to him and, at seven o’clock, 
gave him up with a leaden heart and the feeling 
that I had traveled miles out of my way to be 
“pushed a little too far.” At seven-thirty, or 
thereabouts, he was mine. He wasn’t very big, 
perhaps, as big trout go, but I have a crick in my 
neck yet gained from sitting “slewed” around in 
the bow seat of the canoe on the paddle back to 
camp. 
The region of what once was a part of the 
Magalloway River, the stream formed by the 
junction of the big and little rivers of that name, 
is an interesting one. Azicohos Dam, built a 
few years ago a mile or more above the village 
of Wilson’s Mills, Me., to furnish water power, 
has created from that point back some thirteen 
miles to the junction of the two branches a long 
lake of greatly varying width and fringed, of 
course, with vast quantities of timber, still stand¬ 
ing but dead. The lake ends at the joining of 
the two streams—the little river, coming from 
mountain springs, and the Big Magalloway, 
which is the outlet to Parmachenee Lake, north¬ 
ernmost of the Rangeley group. Brooks which 
